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December 14, 2014:

A COZY KIND OF SATURDAY

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, it was a cozy kind of a Saturday.  Not much oomph, not much zing, not much zip, but relaxing and what I needed.  I only got about seven hours of sleep, then she of the Evil Eye arrived and I took leave of the home environment.  First I went and had a cheese omelet and an English muffin.  Then I went to Fast Frame with some art that needed framing.  It took about twenty minutes to find something I liked.  After that, I went directly to our little mall in the Oaks of Sherman and went to their See’s Candy store where I used two gift certificates to get two boxes of nuts and chews.  One simply must always have nuts and chews about the house.  From there I went to the mail place and picked up one little teeny-tiny package.  Then I came home.

Once home, I answered some e-mails, listened to some singer samples, did a bit of writing, and had a couple of telephonic conversations.  Then I sat on my couch like so much fish.

Yesterday, I watched two motion pictures on DVD screeners.  The first motion picture was entitled Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon as a woman at a crossroads who decides to trek for three months and many, many miles.  I’m not a huge fan of this kind of film and they do all seem the same to me.  This one flashes back to scenes rather elliptically, so there’s that.  In the end I don’t find these stories of redemption (the lady, a real person, was a heroin user and slept with anyone she came across) work very well when the character basically tells us that she wouldn’t change a thing she did – not the heroin, not the sleeping around – because they made her the person she is.  That’s hunky dorey, but since I am neither a fan of drugs or promiscuity in the extreme, I just don’t buy that particular brand of justification.  The film is all right and Miss Witherspoon is fine, but in the end I just didn’t really care about any of it.

Then I went to Gelson’s and got a few baby back ribs and some rice for my evening snack, along with the beloved melon balls, these of the honeydew variety.  I came home, ate them all up, and then watched the second motion picture on a DVD screener, this one entitled Still Alice, starring Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin.  It’s a very well done film, which won’t be to everyone’s taste – an earnest drama about early Alzheimer’s.  Thankfully, there’s never an overdose of glucose and it’s all told straightforwardly and with a reasonable running time of 101 minutes WITH credits.  I don’t think it will come as much of a surprise that Miss Moore is excellent – she’s quite affecting and believable as her condition worsens with rapidity that is shocking.  Having known and/or been around a couple of elderly people who suffered from it, it’s a disease that they will hopefully find a cure for.  To lose your memories and who you are, to forget knowing the people close to you, is terrifying and terrible.  In one of the film’s most affecting scenes, Miss Moore, who’s left herself a coherent message on her computer so she can watch it when she’s too far gone to want to live, leaves herself instructions to kill herself from an overdose of pills.  Watching her understand that but forgetting the details by the time she reaches the bathroom to do it, is heart-wrenching.  There’s obviously no happy ending here.  I liked it quite a bit.

After that, the CDR for our next release was dropped off to me.  This one requires a lot of my attention – it’s just not a good listening experience if we keep it in strict show order.  Quite a bit of the original score was replaced by existing music, but I think I’m going to include the original versions or unused cues within the body of the score because it will break things up nicely and make for a much more varied listening experience.  So, I’ll be doing that tomorrow and Tuesday.

Today, I have a nine-thirty meeting (I’ll try to eat very lightly – maybe just a plain omelet or a cheese omelet), then I’ll come home and do a few things, then I’m seeing Into The Woods at three, then go directly to dinner with Kay Cole and Michael Lamont.

This coming week I will finish the song choices and get everyone their music, I will sequence our next release, and I have a bunch of meetings and meals and shows to see, including something Barry Pearl directed and, if they arrange a ride for me, White Christmas in San Diego.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have a meeting, do a few things, see Into The Woods, and have a meal.  Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them.  So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have had a cozy kind of Saturday.

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