Well, dear readers, I hope you all had a wonderfully wonderful Easter and that you all found your gaily-colored Easter eggs and had a lovelier than lovely Easter meal. I personally had a pleasantly pleasant Easter all by my very own self. I slept until eleven, which I really needed to do, then got up, was lazy only for thirty minutes, then did a three-mile jog. I called it an Easter Jog, just to be in the spirit of things. There seemed to be a lot of cars out. After that, I went and had my meal o’ the day, which I called the Easter Meal o’ the Day, just to be in the spirit of things. That meal consisted of the following menu items: A chili, cheese and onion omelet, potatoes, and an English muffin, which I called an Easter English muffin, just to be in the spirit of things. Then I came home to find the Internet down. I called Time Warner and, as always, they would say nothing other than they were trying to figure out what the problem was. I told them the problem was Time Warner. So, I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Yesterday, I watched several things. I began my viewing adventure with a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled Used Cars. I know this film has a legion of fans who find it brilliant and hilarious. I’m afraid I am not one of them. And frankly, I don’t think it would have gotten produced had Mr. Spielberg and John Milius not put themselves on the film as executive producers. They’d all been involved in the huge Spielbergian bomb known as 1941 just the year before. And, for me, this film is about as funny as that film – not at all. I find things to admire about 1941 but the comedy isn’t one of them, and I find things to admire about Used Cars, but the comedy isn’t one of them. It has a fun cast – well, that’s actually about it for me. I find it labored and way too long for its own good – the film was not a hit, but gained cult status as youngsters discovered it via cable, like so many films of the 1980s. It’s now considered by those folks as some kind of classic. The best part of it is Gerritt Graham, who I would work with just a year later. Kurt Russell is very good, and Jack Warden is wonderful, as always. Deborah Harmon, who I also worked with back then in a commercial, is a sweet heroine. But the film is mean-spirited for a lot of its running time. Its writers, Bob Gale and Robert Zemekis, finally got it all right just a few years later with Back to the Future. For the film’s fans, the good news is that the transfer is wonderful.
By the end of that, the Internet came back up, three hours after it had gone down. So, I then finished the documentary called Milius, about filmmaker John Milius. It’s mostly very well done, with good anecdotes told be a plethora of interesting folks. I had no idea that Milius had had a stroke several years ago and that he is still recovering from it. It’s worth a view, if you like documentaries about filmmakers. It’s on Netflix. I then watched the first forty minutes of another documentary, this one about food and dieting – it’s very interesting and has lots of fascinating factoids about diet and sugar and what actually causes weight gain and loss. I’m looking forward to finishing it.
I then watched the latest episode of Mad Men. This one was excellent and much better than the season premiere episode. The young gal who plays daughter Sally has really come into her own as a young actor – she was terrific, and I hate to say it, but I was so happy Meagan wasn’t in this episode – I have grown so weary of that character. Peggy and Joan both have good scenes, too.
After that, I wrote the first third of the commentary for the next Kritzerland show, as well as figured out my first pass at the show order. And I also wrote the blurb for the event page, which will go up at some point tomorrow evening. And that was my Easter Day and Evening.
Today, which is not Easter, I have a work session at eleven for the Kritzerland show. I’m hoping that doesn’t last more than ninety minutes. IF it doesn’t, I should be able to get in a jog before going to our Li’l Abner rehearsal. I have a lot of blocking to do this week. I’m sure I’ll eat something after rehearsal, then come home and write more commentary.
Tomorrow, I have a work session with Sandy and Lanny, our last one for a while, as Sandy goes back East. Then it’s Li’l Abner all week, including another big choreographing day. We have a designer run on Friday, which is rather quick to be doing such a thing, but I think most of the show will be staged by then – it will be rough, but they’ll get the idea. I think I’m seeing something over the weekend.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have a work session, maybe do a jog, rehearse, eat, and write. Today’s topic of discussion: What cult classic’s charms elude you – those films you simply don’t “get” and don’t understand why they have their cult? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, which I shall call post Easter Dreams, just to be in the spirit of things.