Well, dear readers, today is November 9th. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, today is November 9th and I bring that up for one very specific reason. What is that reason you might ask and I might tell you, for why should I withhold such things from you dear readers? The reason is that on this very date in a year I like to call Stanley Kurbrick’s 2001 this here site was born. Here is the way it began:
First, a message from Guy Haines:
When my hordes of eight fans said I should have my own website I thought, what a fine idea. After all, everyone needs their own website. Mark Bakalor came on board to design it and I feel he’s done a fine job. But, then he said I had to contribute. Well, I simply can’t contribute. I’m much too busy with tennis and my full time occupation of having no life.
I have asked my close personal friend, Mr. Bruce Kimmel, if he wouldn’t mind writing a daily journal for the site. He was gracious enough to consent, although he did ask for a year’s supply of Red Vines. I told him he could write about anything he wanted to as long as it wasn’t about me. I want this to be the only performer website where there is absolutely nothing written about the performer. Isn’t that unique?
Mark is managing to come up with some candid photos of me, and even some of my family. In addition to reading Bruce’s daily dose of drivel, soon I’m told, you’ll be able to check out some of the other little nooks and crannies. You never know what you might find.
Sincerely,Guy Haines
Bruce’s first entry:
Well, hello dear readers, and welcome to Haines His Way, the official website for my friend Guy Haines. Do you know that if you hit the wrong letter when you type Guy Haines you get Buy Haines? Just asking. I am very flattered indeed to have been asked to keep a daily journal here on the Guy Haines website. I used to have weekly notes elsewhere, but those notes disappeared into the ether, hence we now have new notes, or bk’s notes II, the sequel. So, now I shall have daily notes right here at Haineshisway.com. Well, perhaps not daily notes, perhaps every other day notes, or bi-weekly notes, or whatever suits my fancy.
Oh, it is a time of sweeping change, dear readers. For example, I just emptied all the coins out of my pocket and swept them. I love sweeping change and I recommend it to everyone with a preponderance of coins.
As you all are probably aware, there have been many events happening in my life. I’m not quite prepared to talk about them, however. Not quite yet. So, for now, I’d like to review one of my favorite movies, which has a wonderful special edition on DVD. Here is my review of Jaws.
Jaws is an excellent motion picture. It is about sharks. I hate sharks and this film teaches us that they can come from nowhere and bite you in your butt cheeks. Sharks are merciless creatures, eating machines, and you must avoid them at all costs, or so the movie would lead you to believe. Sharks are out for blood. There is really no reason for it, Robert Shaw says, it’s just in their nature. However, we learn by the end of the film that even though sharks attack over and over, you can survive by blowing them up. This is exactly what Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider do in Jaws, which, by the way, is about sharks. Steven Spielberg directed Jaws quite brilliantly – he really gets you to thinking how scary sharks are. Interestingly, the mechanical shark used in the making of the film was named Bruce. Mechanical sharks are not as scary as real sharks. A real shark would never be named Bruce. Perhaps we should have a contest and you readers could submit names you think would be good names for sharks. A must-see film, I rate it four stars (out of four stars). Next time I’ll be reviewing another great film: Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, which has one of my favorite Hitchcockian scenes in it – the one in the bazaar where the guy gets stabbed in the back. I love that scene.
Why am I reviewing movies, for heaven’s sake? Shouldn’t I be writing about Guy Haines? Oh, that’s right, I can’t. He doesn’t want me to write about him. He bribed me with a year’s worth of Red Vines not to write about him. I accepted of course.
Last Monday, I attended a CD release party for my friend Adryan Russ. I produced a CD for her, Everyone Has a Story, featuring her songs interpreted by some pretty amazing folks, including Tami Tappan, Susan Egan, Jason Graae, Barbara Deutsch, Lisa Richard, David Burnham, Karen Benjamin, Suzanne Blakeslee, Michelle Nicastro, Joan Ryan, Adryan herself, Sharon McKnight, Juliana A. Hansen and yes, Guy Haines. It’s available on the LML label. We had lovely cheese slices and fatty meats and a good time was had by all.
That’s it for now. I shall have to think about what to write for next time. I’ve never really done a daily journal before (or blog) so I must do some research into blogs, because one simply can’t write a blog if one doesn’t know what the hell a blog is. I do know that I will be giving frequent updates as to my whereabouts and my whenabouts. Sometimes I may even talk about my thereabouts or thenabouts. You will get all the latest news right here at Haineshisway.com. Check back often. We love getting your comments and questions, so remember to leave them for me below each and every entry!
As you know, I settled into the daily notes immediately. So, today is our anniversary and we are entering the 14th year of this here daily thing I write, the longest-running daily blog in the history of something called the Internet. If anyone can figure out a way to get us in the Guinness Book of World Records, please let me know. Of course, those who’ve been with us from the beginning know that this site was born out of true and ugly evil, the likes of which I hadn’t seen before and haven’t seen since. But out of that ugliness and evil was birthed a wonderful, positive and beautiful place, a place with wonderful dear readers, several of whom have forged lasting and meaningful friendships. We’ve been through a lot here. When we began, no one was really doing this sort of thing, in terms of the community of our board. We celebrated birthdays and victories and commiserated on losses and problems. We created the patented haineshisway.com excellent vibes and xylophones, we created a bevy of catchphrases that have been “borrowed” by any number of people on other sites over the years.
When we began, there was no social media – WE were really the first inkling of that, if I may be so bold as to say it. Our little corner of the world has been imitated many times over the years. One extremely popular and well-known Broadway site, actually “borrowed” a lot of stuff we’d made popular. This is not speculation or paranoia – the owner and creator of that site wrote me many times to query me on our content. No MySpace and certainly no Facebook – we had a very unique family and community, where dear readers could share photos and stories and keep up with each other, why, just like what would happen on Facebook. We’ve suffered some sad deaths on the site, and we’ve suffered way too many defections for way too many silly reasons, but there’s no avoiding stuff like that. And we’ve had a couple of people who just embraced Facebook as “their” new home – one of them actually said to me, I’ve got Facebook – why do we need haineshisway. I’ve got my own home now. Really? That’s pretty funny if you think about it. Anyone who thinks Facebook is about them is really kind of delusional. Yes, the same six people will see and “like” all your posts and occasionally engage in discourse, but it ain’t about you. You’re one of millions upon millions upon millions of people, and most people, thanks to the Facebook “improvements” over the years, don’t even see your posts. What Facebook IS good for is promotion and getting the word out, and connecting with family members who live elsewhere, I suppose. But those who have remained loyal and true dear readers have my eternal gratitude, because we truly are, even with Facebook, one of the most unique and wonderful places on all the Internet, and this here site still to this day gets rather astonishing traffic every year – we’ve been doing around ten million hits per year for the last seven years or so, which is just amazing when you think about it.
I get e-mails from the most surprising places and people who read the notes every day and who always have something interesting to say. So, as we enter our fourteenth year, let’s all raise a glass of something-or-other, let’s all eat a cheese slice or a ham chunk, let’s all put on our colored tights and pantaloons and our pointy party hats, let’s all dance the Hora or the Frug, and wish ourselves the happiest of anniversaries and hope that we have many more years to come and will be here long after Facebook finally crashes and burns and becomes victim to “the next big thing.”
Yesterday was not an unpleasant day. I got over nine hours of sleep, got up, answered e-mails and had telephonic conversations, then finally wrote a text I needed to write and dealt with the subsequent responses. We’ll see how that all plays out later today. Then I picked up a few packages, including my Christmas cards – the first time EVER that I’ve been early – usually I don’t get them till the second week of December. We made one tiny cast switch for the holiday show and I still have to choose two songs for two performers, then that’s all done. I did get everyone their music. Then it was time to go to the home of our very own Doug Haverty for some dinner, prior to seeing him in a play.
Doug’s beautiful daughter Hartley was the chef – she studied at one of the biggest food schools in LA, one of those cordon bleu jernts. Our food was a yummilicious gumbo thing, with sausage and shrimp. Not only was it spectacularly flavorful, it’s basically a really calorie-friendly dish, too. I had two helpings and it was like eating two cups of soup or one big bowl of soup, and up to that point, it’s all I’d had.
Then Doug’s wife and mother and me all went to the theater to see the play. It was a comedy with songs – don’t remember the title – something with Don’t Hug Me in it, I think. This author has written five of these things, like a kind of Nunsense series, and I gather they do very well around the country. It’s really not my kind of humor, but I did laugh occasionally and the cast did very well, and it was well paced. For me, if thirty minutes were lopped off and it was done in one act it would play better.
After the play, Doug and wife and mom and our friends Leslie and her daughter Alexa all went over to the Coral Café. We all split the yummy nachos with ground beef – we all had pretty equal portions so it wasn’t too too bad, and then I had a small slice of pumpkin pie for my sweet. It was fun and then I came directly home.
Today, I shall just relax until I have a visit in the late afternoon/early evening, which will, most likely, be followed by some dinner.
Tomorrow, I’ll begin getting everything ready for my trip – making sure I’ve got everything I need, trying to book an appointment to get coifed by Teddy, printing our patter for the two shows, sending ahead Evan Harris’s Li’l Abner costume, and arranging transportation to the airport. I’ll actually try to do most of that stuff by Tuesday so I can just relax on Wednesday, because my flight’s round six-fifteen in the morning so I have to be at the airport no later than five and maybe even before five.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, relax, have a visit and eat. Today’s topic of discussion: Forget free-for-all day today – today let’s talk about favorite haineshisway.com memories – how you found us, when you came to the site, and good things that have happened while here. So, let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall dream sweet dreams of haineshisway.com and our anniversary.