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July 28, 2014:

AUNTIE MEME

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, share this if you agree with it.  If you do, you won’t believe what happens next.  It brought tears to my eyes.  This is horrible, please share.  I’ve decided that I have so many friends who don’t acknowledge my posts – if you like me and want to remain my friend, post one word to tell me so.  I hereby state that my posts are owned by me and strictly private as per policy.  Any of this seem familiar.  These are known as memes.  Memes have been around forever but the word “meme” was only coined in 1976, unless you count Patrick Dennis’ wonderful book, Auntie Meme.  So, in case you haven’t figured it out, I hate these Facebook memes.  Yes, everything above is typical crap from Facebook.  Reasonably intelligent people post them over and over again.  They also post completely bogus stories filled with lies, all designed, as all these things are, for click-throughs – I’m convinced that the minute you click through to any of that stuff your information is then taken and sold to spammers.  The bogus stories are especially horrid – you know, the McDonald’s stuff, the disgusting images that are all photoshopped horse manure – it takes literally four seconds to find out these things are bogus and hoaxes – Google, type it in, voila.  Whatever merits or non-merits Facebook may or may not have, the memes are the lowest of the low.  I hate them with a passion and go after anyone who posts a hoax or bogus story.  And these dolts get angry that someone is calling them on it.  Well, who wants to see this crap – these horrible images and stories that aren’t real?  It all shows up on one’s newsfeed – I admittedly don’t spend a whole lot of time there, but the times when I do, I just don’t want to see that stuff EVER.  But what happens is, as soon as you accept a “friend” Facebook’s default is that you are “following” them.  So, every time I see something like that I immediately unfollow them.  Facebook does turn certain types into raving idiots.  For others, it’s obviously fun, just as this here site is obviously fun for our discussion board denizens.  In fact, for me, this board is much more fun than Facebook ever could be and I encourage all you dear lurkers out there in the dark to just register and join our merry troupe, the best in all the Internet.  I has spoken.  Or, as Jerry Herman might have written:

 

The worst of Facebook, tell you no lie:

Meme

I wish that we could kiss them goodbye

Meme

 

Yesterday was a perfectly okay day.  I finally managed to get eight hours of blessed sleep, got up, figured it was already too late to jog, so just did stuff on the computer and then at eleven-fifty left for lunch and to see Bye Bye Birdie.  The twenty-minute drive took about fifty minutes, thanks to outrageous and really stupid and pointless traffic.  On the 101 I flew to Sepulveda where everything came to a standstill.  It was then twenty miles an hour for the next ten to fifteen miles – as soon as we got past Parkway Calabassas everything magically cleared up – just like that.  No accidents, nothing off to the side, just a bunch of idiots out for a Sunday drive at noon, seemingly going nowhere.  And just how does all that traffic just instantly disappear.  So, I was fifteen minutes late for lunch, as was Maddy Claire Parks who was coming from the City of Studio as well.  We were all at the CPK next to the theater.  I had the 600 calorie salmon meal – I actually don’t think it was 600 calories (they say 600 or less).  Then we all went to see Bye Bye Birdie.

I’m just going to say that I love Bye Bye Birdie and I had friends in the show and my pal Lloyd Cooper was the conductor and musical director.  He and his band were great, so that was fun.  Other than that, I’ll just say that Bye Bye Birdie is not a walk in the park to get right.  The tone, the casting, everything kind of really has to be perfect for it to fire on all cylinders.   Some of the cast were quite good – it was a larger than usual cast, some sixty of them, because they had a kids ensemble.  Bye Bye Birdie is also a long show in its original form – here it was even longer, thanks to the inclusion of the kids singing the movie’s title song and the addition of the song for the mother, which was, I believe, written for one of the revivals or maybe even the TV movie.  It’s a nice number, but it just slows the show down when the show needs to move along.  There was a lot of high energy on stage, and that’s always fun to watch.  I’d planned to say hello to the folks I knew after the show, but there were so many parents and families of the young kids that it was just too crazy and noisy to even think about.  So, I just came home and thankfully there was no traffic.

I then did a two-and-a-half mile jog, and then watched one of the short Harold Lloyd films that’s included with The Freshman.  It was very funny and one of his “thrill” movies, prefiguring the astonishing stuff in Safety Last.  The short film also had a fun score by Carl Davis.  I wish these scores were out on CD, but alas they are not.

Then I had some Chicken in a Biskit crackers, a couple of pieces of salami and one little Bonbel light cheese thing.  I then put the first of the Ormandy box CDs into iTunes – I chose the Rachmaninov Second Symphony (it also has the beautiful Vocalise on it, too).  That symphony is simply one of the most astonishingly beautiful pieces of music ever written – each movement a gem, but the third movement perhaps one of my top ten favorite themes ever written.  Eric Carmen thought so too, if you’ve ever heard Never Gonna Fall in Love Again.  And Barry Manilow “borrowed” the tune for one of his songs, and Don Sebesky borrowed it for an orchestral piece called You Can’t Go Home Again.  When I did my Barry Manilow spoof for Likely Stories, this was one of the lyrics I sang as Barry:

 

Thank you Rachmaninov

This melody’s divine

And please don’t get upset

If I tell them that it’s mine

 

Once it was in iTunes I, of course, listened to it.  Oh, those Philadelphia strings and Ormandy’s sensitive and beautifully passionate reading of the symphony.  A great recording, and the bonus of Vocalise a real treat – another astonishingly beautiful Rachmaninov melody.  It just doesn’t get better.

Today, I shall do a jog, I shall eat, and then we have our first Kritzerland rehearsal, which I am very much looking forward to.

Tomorrow and Wednesday there’s lots o’ stuff to do (I’m trying to get a jump on the Kritzerland fourth anniversary show for September), Thursday I have a meeting I’m really not looking forward to in the morning, but it must be done – and please send your most excellent vibes and xylophones that it go the way I’d like it to go – then we have our second rehearsal.  Saturday is our stumble-through and Sunday is sound check and show.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, eat, write, rehearse, and relax.  Today’s topic of discussion: What Facebook memes drive you batty?  Or do you just ignore them?  Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland were I shall dream of a new Broadway show entitled Auntie Meme.

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