Well, dear readers, here is a thing that happened at my dinner meeting last night. I’d eaten a ham and Swiss on rye for lunch, plus some tap tap tapioca pudding, so not too too horrible, calorie-wise. So, for my second meal I had a chili, cheese and onion omelet. I thought that wouldn’t be too heavy and it wasn’t. So, I take my first three bites and no onions – so, I say, “There don’t seem to be any onions in this chili, cheese and onion omelet” to no one in particular. Then I take my fourth bite and suddenly the onion appears – like a huge amount of onions in one bite, like so huge I thought my head was going to explode from the sudden infusion of a humungous amount of onions for a single bite. And so it continued until I got to the other end of it, at which point there were no more onions. That was a thing that happened, and as I type this, the onions are still very strong in my stomach. Frankly, I like the onions to be spread evenly throughout the omelet, not in one big burst, although it did wake me up and kept me awake. There, we’ve now had an entire paragraph about onions. I’ve always wanted to do that and now, after thirteen years of writing this here daily thing, I’ve done it.
Before we talk about yesterday, here are two more videos from Sunday evening’s Kritzerland show. First we have our very own Sandy Bainum (aka the East Coast Singer) performing Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most – a simple and beautiful rendition.
Wasn’t that simple and beautiful. That was the second song I ever learned how to play on the piano, when I was fifteen years of age. Next we have our very own Sami Staitman, our very own pint-sized little Ethel Merman doing Some People and doing it wonderfully.
She actually wanted to do Rose’s Turn, but that was a little too outré even for me.
Yesterday was a day that began in the morning, barely. I needed sleep so badly and sleep I got – I slept until eleven and boy were my arms tired. Oh, that’s a flying punch line not a sleeping punch line. I got up, answered e-mails, and then went and had my sandwich and pudding, after which I picked up some packages. I came back home, did some work on the computer, including a new edit road map, which I then got to the mastering guy. I had to have a few telephonic conversations about various and sundried things. Things are a little tense around these here parts in certain ways and I would really like some respite from it. So, perhaps a few excellent vibes and xylophones from the likes of you dear readers would help. There are so many fantastic things going on and I am loving all of that, so these little tensions, all of which have to do with Kritzerland and trying to just survive in a very strange world in terms of sales and keeping the releases coming, has been daunting of late and it would just be nice if some of that pressure would be alleviated a bit. It’s the nature of things, that I know, and it will all be fine in a couple of months. And that’s enough about that. Then I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I finished watching All the King’s Men, starring Mr. Broderick Crawford and a whole slew of wonderful actors. For whatever reasons, I’d never seen the film before and it’s just a great, great movie, with a well-deserved Oscar-winning performance by Mr. Crawford. The film is beautifully written and directed. Best of all, the transfer on this Twilight Time Blu and Ray is spectacularly good. What’s a little dismaying and even a little shocking is that there is almost nothing being said about this release on any of the usual sites. It’s really peculiar to me. It’s a Best Picture winner, for heaven’s sake. Mr. Crawford has always been a favorite of mine, and one of his final jobs was for me in The Creature Wasn’t Nice, as the original voice of Max, the computer, before the idiot producers thought they could be more hip and have a nobody voice the computer in a way that is completely unfunny. He came into a voiceover studio and the whole thing took about an hour and he was just a sweet, delightful man. I remember listening to his first takes and thinking that he wasn’t quite getting what it was – so, I went in to talk to him and was just talking around things for a minute, when he interrupted and said, “Oh, you want Highway Patrol, don’t you?” I said, “Exactly,” and from that point on he did it perfectly. You can hear him on my cut of the film and it’s so much better than what they ended up with, PLUS he was an OSCAR-winning actor – how do you just cavalierly toss that out of a film? Well, you’re stupid, that’s how you toss it out of the film and that’s why those producers never had a hit film.
Then I watched a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled White Dog. I know I wrote lovingly about the film and its DVD release on Criterion back when it came out. Now it’s been released in the UK and those with region-free players can now watch it. For those who don’t know the history, the film was never released in the United States, due to some idiotic pressure from the NAACP, citing it as a racist film – never mind that they hadn’t seen a frame of the film and the simple fact that the film is, in fact, about as ANTI-racist a film as you can get. Ridiculous. It’s a great film by a wonderful director, Sam Fuller. He also co-wrote the script with Curtis Hanson (from the novel by Romain Gary). Watching it again, I was just as involved in the story as always, and just loved it all over again. It’s a powerful, beautifully acted film, with wonderful performances from Kristy McNichol, Paul Winfield, Burl Ives, and a handful of others, not to mention the four dogs who make up the performance of the titular White Dog. The other hugely successful element is the stunning score by Ennio Morricone, one of his finest. Happily, the transfer is perfection in every way. The Blu-ray has not one extra, and that will stop a lot of people from buying it – note to people: It’s the FILM you want and extras are irrelevant. This is highly recommended by the likes of me and it’s a film I never ever get tired of watching.
After that, I had my dinner meeting with a singer and a mouthful of onions. A Mouthful of Onions – that’s the title of my next novel.
Today, I have a lunch meeting at noon at House of Pies, so more pancakes for me. After that, the helper, who is back from vacation, will come get invoices, and then hopefully I’ll pick up some packages. Then I’m going to see a high school production of Young Frankenstein that Sarah Staitman is in. I loathe the show, but I’m sure it will be fun to see it with a cast of willing students.
Tomorrow is another noon lunch meeting, also at House of Pies, so more pancakes. Actually, I may try to switch that one to somewhere else – we shall see. Then we may have a Sandy and Lanny work session. We have to finalize the last two song choices for the album. Friday, I have a meeting with Kay Cole about Li’l Abner. Saturday is, of course, the book signing and I’m really hoping we have a good turnout – it’s always impossible to predict, although I know going in we’ll have about fifteen for sure, so it won’t be empty by any means.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have a lunch meeting, hopefully pick up packages and see a show. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, after which I shall hopefully be rid of the taste of onions.