Well, dear readers, how can it already be the middle of June? This year is flying by, like a gazelle with a lug nut. I personally find lug nuts to be curious things. I like them, don’t get me wrong, but they are, to me, curious things. The lug nut has a curious history. Herman J. Lug was sitting in his study one night many years ago and his wife, Helga J. Lug came in and said, “Look at you just sitting there – Herbert J. Lug, you’re a nut.” He replied, “I’m a nut? My name is Herman, so you’re the Lug nut in this family.” He suddenly sat up, as if a light had gone on over his head. He said, “Wait a minute – I think we have something here.” “Oh, and what is that, Hubert J. Lug?” “Herman, for heaven’s sake! I think we’ve come up with a clever name – Lug nut. I think we could make millions.” And so, Herman J. Lugnut went to the garage, picked up some tools and some metal, and an hour later he christened his new piece of metal the Lug nut and the rest is history. At some point they no longer capitalized the “L” and Herman J. Lug was so upset about it that he changed his name to both Herbert Hubert J. Lug. His wife, Helga J. Lug, suffered a freak and tragic death when she accidentally mistook a lug nut for a dough nut and ate it. What the HELL am I talking about? Don’t I have notes to write. Yes, I damn well have notes to write and they will be filled with stuff and I shall call them The Write Stuff.
My goodness, what was THAT all about? Yesterday was a most interesting day. The good news was that I got over ten hours of blessed and very necessary sleep. Once up, I looked over a draft of a letter, then finessed it further. Just before I was going to send The Second Letter, I received an e-mail from the president of the college. It was an interesting e-mail and yet not and I forwarded it to the attorney. Not sure if I’ll actually respond to it. I then immediately sent The Second Letter, which, in certain ways, was perhaps stronger than The First Letter. It felt good to send it, and then I went and had some food, consisting of a cup of tomato bisque and a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich – neither of which were as good as usual. Since that’s the second day in a row that that’s happened, I’m beginning to think perhaps the regular day chef is on vacation. So, I may take a few days off myself and go elsewhere.
Then I came back home and did some work on the computer, had several long telephonic calls and even printed out some orders. I will say that It’s a Wonderful Life is close to selling out so get it while the getting’s good. After all that, I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
The first thing I did was check out the first twenty minutes of the new Blu and Ray of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows – it’s very nice and very saturated in its color. There are a lot of scenes washed in gorgeous blue (you can see how the blue lighting hits hair and everything else – and I happen to love that look that they simply don’t do anymore) – funnily, none of the wags who are going on and on about how The King and I is sooooo blue have no problem with this film’s color. It’s the same kind of lighting. And then I watched the first twenty minutes of the new Blu and Ray for Kismet. I’ve never seen it, and I found the first twenty minutes kind of enjoyable, especially that great Jack Cole dance for Not Since Nineveh. Then, because I was still a bit lethargic and wanted to watch something that I wouldn’t mind snoozing during, I went to Netflix where I watched two count them two motion pictures.
The first motion picture was entitled The Oxford Murders, starring Elijah Wood and John Hurt. I really thought it was going to be a little gem and it was for about twenty minutes. The big problems are the script, which was written in Spanish and translated by someone into an English shooting script, much too literally. The dialogue is just unnatural and terrible. And I hate to say it, but Elijah Wood is just not a leading man and it is, for me at least, not believable for two gorgeous women who look ten years his elder, to be insanely in love with him and attracted to him. His two love scenes are, well, kind of horrifying. John Hurt is always fun to watch and the film is really well directed and has a lovely score by Roque Banos. It was short, so that was good, but by the mid-point I just lost all interest.
I then watched a motion picture from 1995 that somehow I’d never seen – Nick of Time, a John Badham film, starring Johnny Depp, Christopher Walken, Marsha Mason, Charles Dutton and Peter Strauss. The high-concept part of it was interesting – a normal guy and his six-year-old daughter are fooled by Walken into thinking he’s police, but once inside a van, he finds that Walken will kill his daughter unless he assassinated within ninety minutes a lady running for Governor of California. So, that’s an interesting conundrum. And Mr. Badham is an old pro at this kind of thing and the actors are good. But apparently the screenwriter didn’t know what to do after the log line, because the script is just awful. How many times can Christopher Walken “suddenly” appear out of nowhere? It becomes unintentionally humorous after a while. But I like race against the clock movies so I hung in there – it basically happens in real time – the movie runs a little over ninety minutes. I also enjoyed the musical score for this film, by Arthur Rubinstein.
After that, I just played on the computer, took a shower and that was that. At some point, for my evening snack, I had two bagels, which I think was okay given how little I’d eaten at noon.
Today, I do have to write some liner notes, otherwise I’ll just eat, hopefully pick up packages and relax.
Tomorrow I have a meeting early in the morning, which is fine since she of the Evil Eye will be here. Then I’ll just do other stuff and Sunday will be the same. Next week is a full week of rehearsals with Sandy and Lanny, running both the Ira Gershwin show and all the songs from our album.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, write, eat, relax, not necessarily in that order. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is in your CD player and your DVD/Blu and Ray player? I’ll start – CD, who knows. Blu and Ray, I’ll finish All That Heaven Allows and Kismet, then move on to the new transfer of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – there have been so many differing opinions on it, but I’ll know whether the color is off or not instantly, because I owned for many years a dye transfer Technicolor print. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland where I shall ponder turning the story of Herman J. Lug and his nuts into a motion picture.