Well, dear readers, I have to say we were really ahead of our time. No, not these here notes, which were also ahead of their time, but prior to these notes we were really ahead of our time. I am speaking of course, of the weekly Internet column entitled One from Column A, which was written by The Real A, and ran from September 22 of 1997 to July of 2000. I truly don’t think there’d been anything like One from Column A. Late in 1999, when it became a once-a-month or so column, The Real A gave a real clew to the real identity – only a couple of people figured it out back then, and the column kept on sporadically until it just stopped. I’m not sure why it stopped quite so abruptly, but in searching the last columns I think there may be a final column missing.
Yes, dear readers, I was The Real A, I admit it freely. And the seeds of so many things were sewn in that deliriously daffy column, it’s rather astonishing to revisit them, which is precisely what I’ve been doing for the past three nights. Since there are over 100 of them, that has taken a while. I was initially looking for some of my Sondheim/Lloyd Webber war parodies to use at the next Kritzerland show, and I found some pretty funny ones, including this to the tune of Agony.
Andrew is boring
When he tries to write
Andrew is terrible
I end up snoring
His stuff is so trite
Really unbearable
Agony
Have you listened to Cats???
It’s really awful
It should be unlawful
To Finish Some Hats
Agony!
That’s a Lloyd Webber show
It’s truly dismaying
That they’re always playing
Wherever you go…
What is even more interesting is that in the very first column from September 22 is my very first What If, to wit, what if Stephen Sondheim instead of writing Follies had written Cats. It was short, but here it is.
Here’s a little story that should make you cry
About two unhappy cats
Let us call them Pussy X and Pussy Y
They had lots and lots of spats
Now, X would always purr a lot
When you would pet his fur a lot
He drank his milk and slept till after nine.
But Y was always catty, he
Drove everybody batty, he
Would scratch your face and think it was divine
Given their dilemmas well you may ask why
These two pussies had such grief
This is my belief
In brief
When Meryle Secrest wrote her Sondheim bio, A Life, I posited she would then write my bio, The Real A: A Life. And thus began many, many columns of my early years, and that quite literally was the test run for my first novel, Benjamin Kritzer. Most of the events, in one form or another, from all three Kritzer books, had their tryouts in One From Column A. There were many What Ifs, only a handful of which made it into my musical revue, What If. There were many other parodies, faux e-mails from the rich and famous, I answered letters from our devoted readers every week, had a trivia contest every week, and, like here, spoke of shows I saw, films I saw, and basically I wrote about everything I love. We had a huge readership. Mr. Mark Bakalor, whose idea it was, told me we had readers from the New York Times, from Dreamworks and other studios, and from several large magazines, not to mention other websites. Our stats were big from the very beginning, just like here. And they just kept growing during the entire time the column debuted.
I had been making a few pithy posts on Mark’s site, Sondheim.com. And one day he just suggested to me that I write a column every week. I thought it an odd idea, but as I thought about it, I knew I could have fun with it. And so we began. At the time, I was a computer Luddite and had, in fact, never owned such a thing. What I had was Web TV. I would sit on my couch like so much fish (that expression was born there in the second or third column) with my little Web TV keyboard. Mark had created a form for me into which I wrote the column, in two parts (he would format it into one). I believe they were mostly posted on Monday. At the time I began writing the column it was daunting because I really was in New York almost ever few weeks to do an album. But somehow I always timed it well, or I wrote a couple of columns in advance before I left. Not only were the seeds of the Kritzer books sewn there, but also for Album Produced By. I created two sets of fictional songwriters – first Gluckman and Fitz and then Meltz and Ernest. I introduced to the world the expression, “What is it, fish?” in that column, and our loyal readers took it to their high schools and colleges (most, but not all, of our readers were young) and soon everyone was saying it, and we even did T-shirts one year. Amongst the older set, our dear readers included several who would make the journey here, once they realized that The Real A was my very own self – they included Arnold M. Brockman, S. Woody White and his ever-lovin’ der Brucer, and tom of oz.
Reading through a lot of these brought back a lot of memories. The column is genuinely giddy and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. I began spelled backwards words there, I did faux history lessons as I do here, why the recipe for Wacky Noodles even shows up in column 2. I ultimately put it to bed when the label we don’t mention went live and I began doing the first version of what became these here notes on that site. I’ll be sharing a few morsels from One from Column A over the next few days. It really was the beginning of my writing, and without it I’m not sure I would have ever written Benjamin Kritzer and if I hadn’t written that book I probably would never have written a book of any sort. Also, when I wrote Writer’s Block, the reveal of the killer is exactly the same reveal I used for myself in the column. I hit my stride around column five or six – that’s when it all came clear to me in terms of its style and form. It was a time. I had the first seventy-five columns printed out and professionally bound, but I’ve never printed out the final thirty-one and I will do that and get them bound, too. Who knows, perhaps I’ll publish it.
Yesterday was quite a weird little day, mostly because I’d been up till three in the morning perusing columns. So, I actually slept nine and a half hours but didn’t arise until twelve-thirty. The helper came by and got some invoices, and then I had some work to do on the computer. I had many telephonic calls, got the last of the sheet music I needed, and finally got something to eat around four – a cup of soup and a patty melt. Then I came back home and sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I finished watching a motion picture anime from Studio Ghibli entitled The Tale of Princess Kaguya, from an ancient Japanese folk tale. This was a lovely film – beautifully animated in a very simple watercolor kind of style. The characters are wonderful and it is very affecting some of the time. The wonderful score by Joe Hisaishi is very helpful in setting tone and mood. The Japanese voice actors are terrific. After I finished, I listened to a little of the English dub, which I found, as always, not very good. So, if you’re a fan of Studio Ghibli and anime, this handsome, great-sounding Blu-ray is highly recommended by the likes of me.
Today, I shall be up earlier than yesterday. I have some errands and whatnot to do, some food to eat, hopefully I’ll pick up some packages, I’ll bank, and then I’ll relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite animated films from countries other than the United States of America? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall dream of One from Column A.