Well, dear readers, knock, knock – who’s there? Not this here site. This here site was down for the count for at least ten hours yesterday, as was the Kritzerland site. It seems that the forever challenged LADWP had a bit of a power outage downtown – well, you wouldn’t know that from their own site, because they never acknowledged it and still haven’t. I twitted on their Twitter page and the response was “Our engineers are looking into it, call such and such a number for updates.” Sure, right. Whatever happened, it then became a comedy of errors without the comedy. The outage hit the new data center that houses our web host – this move to this new data center, while noble in intention, has been a horror story from the beginning and has caused the host nothing but problem after problem for seven weeks, and unfortunately those problems affect us. Now, when an outage happens, all these jernts have several back-up generators in place to kick in and keep everything going. Only the outage was so strong that it knocked out some circuit that not only shut the main thing down but ALSO every back-up generator. When they finally got us back on line around three in the afternoon, suddenly a router went bad and we were down again. Then they got that fixed only we were online via some kind of battery backup and then – wait for it – the battery went dead. Then we were down for another four or so hours. They finally got one of the breakers back for good, but by that time I was so angry that I’d left and sent several messages telling the host how problematic it would be for all concerned if we weren’t up in time for a) the new Kritzerland release and b) for me to post the new notes. We finally came back up at around ten-thirty but I immediately discovered that the board was doing something wonky just like last time when we went down, i.e. giving an error message if you tried to post twice in a row. I alerted everyone, but that may not get fixed until morning when the tech people are in – hopefully they’ll remember what they did to fix it last time – it’s some offset thing or other. But for now – knock, knock – who’s there? We are. Knock on wood.
Other than that, the day part of the day was fine. After trying to deal with our down site, I had to go to rehearsal. We began with Kay and I continuing to try and make a vaudeville-style number work. It’s been very difficult but I think we finally broke through with the style of it for the cast member who was having difficulty. I asked Kay to make two really tiny nips and tucks in the opening number – I realized there were two things in the arrangement left over from when I’d done it at The Federal – and they served no purpose but Kay had to fill those bars with movement, which also served no purpose – so I cut the measures and it’s much better without them. Then we had a run-through, most of which went really well. I gave a few notes, we had a nice lunch break, and then we did a cue-to-cue for the lighting guy, which went very fast. He wrote the cues and will finesse them now that he knows what’s what. We broke around six, and I came directly home, stopping at K’s Donuts for a treat. Once home, I had to deal with our downed site for a while, then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched the first of the DGA screeners I got, a motion picture entitled Rush, directed by Ron Howard. I had never even heard of the film, but it’s the story of the real-life racing rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda. I’ve always enjoyed a good car racing drama, movies like Grand Prix and Le Mans and Winning and such. I really don’t care for the event itself, but on film it’s exciting and fun. And so it is with Rush – and yet I felt no rush watching Rush. I enjoyed it on some level, the acting was fine, the direction was a bit fussy for my taste, plus owed a bit of a debt to John Frankenheimer and his work on Grand Prix. The races are fine but I just never really felt involved and the huge, thumping and endless music by Hans Zimmer was a major turn-off. It’s also filled with CGI and colorists and all that crap I can’t stand. I’m at the point where I feel “Just put the damn camera in the right place and tell your story without all those ‘tools.’”
I’m told that despite the Kritzerland site being up, Doug Haverty is unable to log in to the FTP site to upload the new release – so he’s dealing with the web guy now trying to figure it all out and none of us can go to bed until it IS figured out, because if we can’t announce in the morning then I have to let the online dealers know they also can’t announce. I’m going to have a strong conversation today and if they’re not going to dump this new company then I want our sites in a different data center – period.
Today, I shall hopefully be up at six to announce our new CD, which is really good – a double bill of Maurice Jarre scores – Taps and The Only Game in Town. Here are the covers.
Then Sandy Bainum and Lanny will call and we’ll just have a chat about her show tonight, and then I’m done for the day, save for finishing my commentary and maybe beginning the next set of liner notes. I’ll eat, hopefully pick up packages, hopefully print out a LOT of orders, and mostly I will relax.
Tomorrow, we’re back in full swing and we have the first of our two dress rehearsals – hopefully the set will be completely finished and painted. Wednesday we have our second dress rehearsal and Thursday we begin previews. I have no idea exactly who is coming to these previews – that will be fascinating. We do Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday matinee. Friday we also have our first Kritzerland rehearsal. Once we’re up and running things get much easier for me.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, announce a new title, hopefully print out a LOT of orders, have a telephonic conversation, eat, hopefully pick up packages, write, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite sports related motion pictures? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, after which I shall hopefully arise to say, knock knock – who’s there – we are!