Well, dear readers, let me just begin these here notes by taking them right into the proverbial toilet – last night I was seeing a musical production at one of those little hole-in-the wall Waiver jernts the seem to populate LA like tsetse flies. Above the toilet was this sign: Do not flush foreign objects down the toilet. I pondered that for quite a while. First I wondered if it was okay to flush American objects down the toilet. Then I pondered what foreign objects on might flush down a toilet – say, an Armenian tampon, a French five-day deodorant pad, a Swedish fish, a Spanish fly, a German wrench, a Filipino flip-flop? I began to see endless possibilities of foreign objects I could flush down the toilet, but it hadn’t occurred to me to bring any foreign objects on my person. If only I had had the presence of mind to bring a Chinese ball bearing or a North Korean hacker. I mean, what was I thinking not having any damn foreign objects on my person? If anyone knows what the HELL I’m talking about, please don’t let me know. Ignorance is bliss and, conversely, bliss is ignorance. We shall now leave the toilet and get to these here notes.
Yesterday, I finally got a little over eight hours of sleep. I finally did a two-mile jog. I never got around to do the banking I should have done, and I never went to pick up any packages, should there have been any to pick up. Instead, I just stayed home and relaxed, prepped our eBlast for Monday’s announcement, listened to the finished master of the second of Monday’s releases (I’d already heard the first), had some telephonic conversations, and worked at the piano a bit.
At five, Adryan Russ and Doug Haverty arrived and we moseyed on over to Genghis Cohen for some food. I hadn’t been in a couple of months, maybe even longer than that. We had our usual foodstuffs – one each of orange chicken (extra crispy), crackerjack shrimp, green beans and Kung Pao chicken. It was all, as always, yummilicious. We were all very full by the end of the meal, but in reality splitting all the dishes three ways, it really wasn’t all that much food. We had lots of fun conversation and then finally we moseyed on over to the theater, which was way the HELL down on Washington Blvd. near La Brea, not the finest neighborhood in the world.
Last night, I saw a production of Putting It Together, a revue based on the songs of my close personal friend, Mr. Stephen Sondheim. I saw the show’s first incarnation with Julie Andrews – it was okay. Then I saw the second incarnation with Carol Burnett – it was okay. Seeing it again last night – it was okay. There are much better Sondheim revues out there and I just never really warmed much to this one. This was in a fifty-seat tiny theater. I’ll just say that it was all okay.
But it reminded me of when I began my theatergoing in LA, back in 1961. Back then, there were a few small theaters, nestled in with the main houses, several on Santa Monica Blvd. like the Players Ring and the Players Ring Gallery and the Cameo, then elsewhere the Coronet and the Civic on La Cienega, and in Hollywood the Las Palmas, the Legrand, the Ivar and a few others. All the working TV actors did plays at these small theaters – you could see Steve Franken or Darren McGavin or Tom Hatten or Robert Vaughn or Richard Long or Bill Bixby and many, many others of that ilk. And the productions were directed by terrific people and the shows were well chosen and done really well. I loved the stuff I saw the big theaters like the Huntington Hartford and the Biltmore, but the small theaters were intimate and wonderful and everything was just as professional there as in the big theaters.
Now we have hundreds of Waiver theaters. Some of them do very good work, but none of them feel like the theaters that were around when I was a young teen. They’re either too processed, about the wrong thing, not good enough, or too pretentious. Maybe it’s just the haze of nostalgia for me, but I just remember seeing such wonderful stuff like the Billy Barnes revues and Little Mary Sunshine and A Family Affair and Under the Yum Yum Tree (that show, which flopped on Broadway, ran for over three years in LA), the Steve Franken Charley’s Aunt, The Man in the Dog Suit with Tom Hatten, Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole with Darren McGavin, The Amorous Flea with Lew Parker, Betty Kean and Philip Procter and on and on and on. Now, we frequently get people with deep pockets abusing the entire principal of small theater productions, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into huge productions in tiny theaters – it has happened way too frequently in the last decade and it’s one of the reasons that Equity is now trying to do away with Waiver theater, which would be a shame. What needs to happen is for it to go back to its original purpose – which was not about money, but art and fun with a level playing field. There was one awful musical done in NoHo about six years ago – I mean DREADFUL. It had a great cast who got paid really good money for a very long rehearsal period, the people who produced it didn’t care what they spent, and in the end they could have just opened it off-Broadway because you will not believe what they spent on it – from what I was told, almost two million dollars, of which they lost every single cent. And, of course, the show has not been heard of since. That’s not a level playing field. And it needs to be. Anyway, it’s always nice to hear a few Sondheim tunes.
After the show, I just came straight home, answered e-mails and tried to figure out why the dimmable lights in the kitchen are now going berserk and flickering on and off. I’m going to have to have an electrician come out here after the first of the year.
Today, I shall hopefully arise after a good night’s beauty sleep, then I’m just relaxing all day and I’m sure I’ll watch a motion picture or three. Then I’m supping at The Smoke House (again!) with a friend I haven’t seen in quite a while. It will be nice to catch up.
Tomorrow, I’ll be up bright and early and also early and bright to announce our final two releases of 2014. Then Jenna Lea Rosen and mom are stopping by with a young man who’ll be in the January show, so I can hear his voice and then choose his second song. But I’m basically now on vacation for the rest of the year and am just doing book stuff and some music stuff. And Wednesday we have our annual Kimmel Christmas Eve Do, Thursday I hopefully see the Darling Daughter™, attend a Christmas partay, and then just relax and enjoy myself.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, relax and sup. 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 we all think about what foreign objects it might be fun to flush down the toilet.