Well, dear readers, it must have been one of those Saturdays, oh, yes, it must have been one of those Saturdays – you know, one of those Saturdays when drivers simply lose their sanity and think they can do anything they want at any time they want and with nary a warning to any other car. This phenomenon happened five times in forty-five minutes. I’ve never seen anything quite like it and by the fifth time I seriously became William Castle’s Homicidal and I was ready to bash in the fifth perpetrator’s motor car and had to hold myself back from doing so. One can find the police pulling over people for doing virtually nothing, but when these ASSES almost kill people the police are naturally nowhere to be seen. The first instance happened after my afternoon meeting as I was about to get on the 405 freeway to come home. There I was in the correct far right line heading to the onramp. Suddenly the car in the lane next to me probably stopped looking at his phone long enough to realize he was about to miss the onramp so he, without looking, just came into my lane and if I wasn’t an alert and on top of it driver I would have crashed into his stupid car and done both of us a lot of damage. But I slammed on my brakes and just missed him by about an inch – he did something approximating an apologetic wave, like that made it all okay after I’d probably almost stripped my brakes. The other four occurrences all happened on the 405 and then 101. Those consisted of idiots literally changing lanes without warning, right in front of me. What is wrong with these people, these complete dumb ASSES who do this kind of thing. And why exactly are they doing it when a) every lane is filled with cars and moving slowly, and b) they come within inches of causing an accident. After the second time, my horn got a workout and I made sure they saw my ire. By the fifth time I was in a murderous mood. These people should be hauled out of their cars, which they clearly have no business driving, and have their licenses torn up. It was amazing, and not in a good way.
Other than that, my Saturday was quite productive and even enjoyable in certain ways. I didn’t quite get eight hours of sleep, got up, answered e-mails and then I had a ninety minute work session with our musical director and we got everything done that we needed to, so he’ll be very prepared for our first Kritzerland rehearsal. I also had a nice telephonic conversation with my muse Margaret, about what will be my next novel. She’d been thinking about it and is worried about the title, which I really like and is the name of one of the leading characters. But I saw her point right away, that it doesn’t really tell you what the book is and, in fact, even though it’s a clever name, it could lead someone to think it’s about other things. So, I’ll ponder that and think about changing the name of the character, or at least the book itself.
Then Sami Staitman and her mom came over and we decided to lunch at the Smoke House, an inspired choice. The first thing I noticed upon perusing the menu, was that all my bitching and moaning, both in writing and in person has paid off – they have put back on the menu the shrimp Louis. Of course, I ordered it, a small cup of clam chowder, and we all shared the garlic cheese bread. I used less thousand island dressing than I’ve ever used, so that was good. It wasn’t just a lunch, though – I had a long conversation with the very talented Sami and by the end of it I felt she understood everything I had to say and I happily told her she’s going to be in the new revue I’m directing. I knew I wanted a young person in it from the moment they came to me about the project. Newley and Bricusse had young gal “urchins” in both their most well known musicals and I just liked the dynamic of it. I just had to make certain that Sami knew what my expectations were for this project and what would be asked of her, which is to leave her brassy “kid” place and start finding a more young adult place, both vocally and personality-wise. It’s basically the kind of thing I did with the first young teen I worked with and created an act for, and subsequently with Jenna Rosen – just giving them material that allows them to be challenged, find new colors, and encourages them to not belt everything, but to find nuances in lyrics and stuff like that. Sami also has to tap in one number, so she’ll get cracking on that. At the beginning, I only had two cast needs for this show – a kid, and Jane Noseworthy, and I’ve got them both. The other cast members are from within the theater’s company of players and I like them very much.
After lunch, I picked up one package, which contained a book I’d done a trade for – I told you those The Cuckoo’s Calling first editions would come in handy – all gotten at reasonable prices and I used one of the extras as a trade for a book I have desperately wanted for three decades but could either never find or couldn’t get anywhere near, price-wise. The book is Franz Kafka’s The Trial, in its extremely rare British first edition, which is the true first in English (I also have the real true first in German, in a beautifully rebound in leather edition – not that valuable, but fun to have). It’s estimated that there were only 1000 copies of the first edition printed in 1935 and the majority of them went to libraries in England. The few copies that survive are mostly without dust jacket. A dealer I know in the UK wrote that he had one in jacket, the jacket having benefitted from some expert restoration. I usually stay far away from any jacket with any restoration (this is actually the first jacket I’ve ever had that has restoration), but given the rarity of the book and jacket, I worked out the trade and the book arrived and I’m very pleased with it. Whoever did the restoration did a beautiful job – the Gollancz jackets of that era were basically very plain yellow paper with black type, and the restoration used the exact yellow paper from Gollancz jackets of that era. I’m sure the jacket had significant flaws originally – it looks like the bottom of the back panel was pretty much gone and it looks like a significant chunk of paper was missing from the top of the front flap, but the work done makes the jacket show very nicely and I’m very pleased with it, especially given the trade I did. There are currently only three copies in jacket on the ABE – one is in very nice condition and the price would make your eyeballs pop out – it will never sell at the price they’re asking. There are two other copies a bit more reasonable, but they each have also had work done on them and frankly neither sounds as nice as mine.
Then I did a few things on the computer, after which I headed to the theater where we’ll be doing our show, which is in Santa Monica. Rather than try the freeway, I took Laurel Canyon, which turns into Crescent Heights and that goes all the way down to where I grew up near Pico and La Cienega. Once on La Cienega it was just a short hop to Venice Blvd. That street has many lanes and moves pretty quickly and I got to the theater five minutes ahead of the meeting – I think the total drive time was forty-five minutes. I wish it could be shorter and I’m sure if there was no traffic it could be accomplished in thirty easily.
Then we had a ninety-minute production meeting and that went really well. Everyone is on the same page, which makes things so nice. I’ll be meeting a set and lighting person very soon so we can get that done and on its way. Thus far I’m very comfortable with everyone and I know they are with me. After the meeting, I came back to the San Fernando Valley in excruciating and completely unnecessary traffic – it was ridiculous. I stopped at Gelson’s and got some of the Super Chinese slaw and four teeny-tiny veggie egg roles for my snack, and I was a bad boy and got two muffin tops for my sweet tooth – one low fat, one regular. I never had a chance to jog, but I think I was okay, calorie-wise. I then sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a region B Blu and Ray entitled Poltergeist III, the sequel to Poltergeist II and Poltergeist. I saw the film at the DGA just prior or just after it opened in theaters. As you know, I love Poltergeist – it just does everything right. The second film I really didn’t like back in the day, but it’s aged kind of well and I don’t mind it now – it’s the same writers as the first film, but it’s so clear that what made the first film was the writers’ co-writer, Steven Spielberg. Without him, the second film never reaches anywhere near the heights of the first. And then there’s the third film. Not only is Spielberg not involved, the original writers aren’t either, nor are the first two film’s stars. In fact, the only two from the previous films that are in the third film are Heather O’Rourke and Zelda Rubinstein.
Poltergeist III is a textbook example of how to ruin a franchise. The story is ludicrous, you don’t care about anyone, they have concocted some stupid thing about Heather O’Rourke’s character staying in Chicago with relatives because the family wanted to get her out of the house and to go to a school for gifted but disturbed children. Brilliant. The new “stars” are Nancy Allen, who is given one of the most nonsensical roles ever written, and Tom Skerritt. Otherwise, the supporting cast is filled with not very good performances so I think we can lay the blame for this stinker firmly at the feet of its director and co-writer (it’s his story). This film has some of the worst and most incompetent dialogue ever, and the director’s decision to do all the special effects in the camera – i.e. on the set and practical with no opticals, results in some very poorly executed sequences, mostly involving mirrors. It’s not hard to figure out the mirror trick when the doubles simply cannot match perfectly the movement of the real actors. It’s shockingly off at times. The idea of having Heather O’Rourke carry the film is silly, and apparently they realized it and cut a few scenes out, from stuff I’ve read on the Internet. And then there is the “brilliant” story decision to bring back the character of Kane from the first sequel. That would maybe be okay if the actor who’d played Kane, Julian Beck, hadn’t, you know, died right after filming Poltergeist II. So a different actor is playing him and the makeup tries to be Julian Beck-like and fails miserably. Heaven forbid the writer/director could actually just come up with a new concept. The film was finished and rated by the MPAA, and then it was decided that no one liked the ending that had been shot (there is much contention about whether it WAS shot, but they couldn’t rate the film if it wasn’t complete and if one reads enough of the history, it had to have been shot), it was decided to reshoot. Then poor eleven-year-old Heather O’Rourke died thanks to a misdiagnosis of a health issue. Still, they shot a new ending with a double, which is why you never see Miss O’Rourke’s face in the final scene.
But I thought maybe this film has aged okay, too, and maybe it will seem better now. I’m afraid not. In fact, it seems worse now and its ninety-five minute running time seems like an eternity. The transfer is very nice, however.
After that, I just did stuff on the computer and that was that.
Today, I have an eleven o’clock breakfast meeting with Kay Cole, who’ll be doing some choreography for our little revue. We’re just going to brainstorm a bit. Then I’ll come home and really buckle down, Winsocki and choose the show order then write the commentary. I will not stop until I’m through.
Tomorrow, I begin in earnest creating the revue, after I’ve had time to digest whatever Kay and I talk about. This I will do slowly and methodically. I think I have lunches almost every day this upcoming week, but other than that I just have to at least get a rough shape and structure for the show and then assign songs and figure out interesting ways to do them. While all that is going on, we will hopefully have approvals on two upcoming projects and one of them will be our next release, which I’ll have to prep. I also have to do three sets of liner notes and finish an edit road map. So, an extremely busy week, which will be followed by three more even busier weeks, with rehearsing the revue, rehearsing Kritzerland and shooting the first two episodes of Outside the Box. It will be daunting but I will get through it and hopefully keep having fun whilst doing so.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have a breakfast meeting, I must jog, and I must do a show order and write a commentary, after which I’ll try to relax and 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, after which I shall awaken and hope it’s not one of those Sundays, in terms of stupid, insane drivers.