Well, dear readers, has anyone noticed that this is the final day of September and, if so, can someone explain to me how it can BE the final day of September? That just boggles my already boggled mind. September has flown by, like a gazelle whistling Dixie. Does anyone still whistle Dixie? Does anyone still whistle? I whistle all the time and I must tell you I got looks from people, as if whistling were an antisocial thing to do. Well, tough bananas, people who give looks. I will whistle whenever I damn well please because whistling is a pleasantly pleasant thing to do and it brightens one’s day. I have whistled since I was a wee bairn. I believe I became enamored of whistling thanks to Muzzy Marcellino, the marvelously marvelous man who whistled for John Wayne in The High and the Mighty and on that film’s brilliant theme by Dimitri Tiomkin. From then on I whistled all the time. I whistled a happy tune, I whistled while I worked, I wet my whistle and I have even had my close personal friend, Mr. Guy Haines, whistle on CDs. In fact, you can hear him whistle on the new Sandy Bainum CD, on the track Bluesette. I’m whistling now as I write these here notes and thankfully there are no people here to give me looks. Why am I going on about whistling? In any case, it’s the last day of September and therefore tomorrow will be October and it is my fervent hope and prayer that October will be a month filled with health, wealth, happiness, creativity, and all things bright and beautiful.
Yesterday was a rather busy day when it was supposed to be a relaxing day. I didn’t get to bed until three and I slept until ten. Then I just buckled down, Winsocki and finished the liner notes and got that off for proofing. Then I spent a good deal of time doing the sequencing and edit road map for the shorter score on our upcoming two score CD. It was actually easier than I thought – the score as used in the film is only fifteen minutes, but there were a lot of little alternates and then some unused cues. Many of the alternates were not really much different from the real version so I saw no need to just have five versions of the same exact music – I chose the ones that were really different and so it will be about twenty-seven minutes of music from that film, which is perfect. The companion score will be around forty-five minutes.
After all that, the guy who did all my audio/video wiring came by because I wanted to swap out the older HDMI cord for the new and better one that came with the new Blu and Ray player, plus I couldn’t get the wireless thingee to work. We began with that and he ascertained that plugging the thingee directly into the back of the machine and hence facing AWAY from the wireless router in the kitchen was causing too weak a signal. Happily, the player comes with a kind of extension for the thingee and we plugged it into that and put it facing the right way and voila – it connected to the Internet, found my network and instantly did a firmware update – once that was done, we did several tests with the player and I must say that the firmware update smoothed out the two or three things I wasn’t thrilled about.
Then I went and had a ham and Swiss on rye, which I felt was very wry. I had no fries or onion rings, just a little cole slaw. Then I came home and just couldn’t work up the energy to jog – I was just not in the mood. Instead, I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled Plunder Road, a programmer from 1957 in Regalscope and black-and-white (I love scope and black-and-white), starring Gene Raymond, Jeanne Cooper, Elisha Cook, Jr. and Wayne Morris, a no-star cast, but good actors all. But the attraction is the film’s very strange director, Hubert Cornfield. He only made a handful of films, but all of them are really interesting and the feel of them is just unique. He has a very small filmography, but I’ve enjoyed every one of his films, which, besides Plunder Road, includes The Third Voice, the great Pressure Point, and one of my guiltiest of guilty pleasures, The Night of the Following Day, starring Marlon Brando and Pamela Franklin. Plunder Road is a lean seventy-two minutes, a robbery picture that has a good deal of tension. It breezes by and it’s a lesson in what you can do with a teeny-tiny budget. The transfer, once you’re past the bad-looking main titles, is sharp, with good contrast, although there is, in its second half, quite a bit of dirt and scratches.
I then watched another motion picture on Blu and Ray, this one a documentary called Room 237, which is basically about five or six people who are obsessed with the Stanley Kubrick film, The Shining, and their somewhat nutty theories about hidden meanings and things they see in the film. One sees it as a film about the genocide of the American Indian. Another sees it as being about the holocaust, while another thinks it’s Kubrick’s apology for staging what he is convinced was a fake moon landing footage in 1969. It just goes on and on and some of it is amusing and some of it is just plain wacko. They talk about things they see in certain scenes and while they’re talking (you never actually see any of the speakers) you see the scene in question and there’s frequently nothing there that they’re referring to. It’s interesting – critics really liked the documentary while audiences took it literally and thought it was crap. But I think it set out to do something and it does it – it shows you how nutty and obsessive people can be about one film, and to what lengths they’ll go to convince you their conspiracy theories are absolutely believable. There are a lot of clips in the film and a few shots with actors playing moviegoers – it’s all a little preciously directed, but I found it interesting enough to make it until the end.
Then I was feeling ever so guilty about not jogging, so I girded my loins (no mean feat) and I did a three-mile jog, after which I had a teeny-tiny frozen pizza thing – not great but only three hundred calories, so I was considerably under 1200 for the day. Then I just did some work on the computer, whilst I whistled, because I’m all about the damn whistling.
Today, I shall do a jog, start a new set of liner notes, but also gather up the music for the November Kritzerland show and finalize the song choices and cast our final singer. I hope to have a nice, positive telephonic conversation about the potential upcoming show, and once I have that then I’ll book the trip to New York as long as the timing works. I’ll do a jog, I’ll eat, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, I’ll do errands and whatnot and relax.
Tomorrow is our first Kritzerland rehearsal, so that will be fun. The rest of the week is meetings and meals and conceptualizing and our second rehearsal, then our stumble-through, then our sound check and show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, write, gather music and finalize song choices, cast a singer, hopefully pick up packages, have a nice telephonic conversation and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: Are you a whistler? Are you a whistler’s mother? You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow. And since Oscar Mayer had a weenie whistle, what were your favorite Oscar Mayer products when you were a wee laddie or lassie? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland where I shall whistle myself to sleep.