Well, dear readers, we’re baaaaaack, after being off-line for twelve count them twelve hours. To say I was apoplectic and angry would be an understatement. I was so apoplectic that I had to eat an apple, which then made me appleplectic. I gotta tell you. What was supposed to happen quickly never happened at all – they, the faceless, anonymous people at the faceless and anonymous data center could not get the new firewall thing to work, so that didn’t even get done yet. What they did do is find two things that were causing this huge problem for the last five days and they fixed those as a temporary Band-Aid until they do the firewall fix, which will happen sometime this week in the middle of the night and which will happen without anyone really noticing it. We came back online about eight yesterday morning and things were working very smoothly – not AS smoothly as they will with the new firewall thing, or so I’m told, but quickly enough. I went to bed at two and was up at eight-thirty. I could have gone to bed at midnight, but they kept telling me it would be up and running any minute.
I did have a long telephonic conversation with the owner of the web hosting company, and he did at least one thing to assuage my annoyance and being appleplectic. I did go back to bed for about ninety minutes but I’m not sure I really slept. Once up, I did some work on the computer, chose a couple of songs and locked down our cast save for a guest star. Then I went and had some pasta in creamy tomato sauce and a bagel. Then I picked up two packages, after which I came home. I finished a song I’ve been working on and got it recorded into the iPhone. Then I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I finished watching a documentary about the National Enquirer and the man who founded it. It’s quite an interesting show, directed by Ric Burns. Gene Pope was, as they say, a character, a regular Charles Foster Kane (the film opens with an aping of the Citizen Kane opening, including the Bernard Herrmann music) of the sleazy set. Buying the New York Enquirer in the 1950s for $75,000, Pope turned it into a moneymaker by pandering to the crowd who couldn’t get enough sensationalism and gore in their daily papers. And I do mean gore – horrifying gore, and shocking that they could get away printing it. Bodies cut in half, limbs severed, blood-soaked accident victims, death in all sizes, shapes and colors. People couldn’t get enough. In the 1960s Pope had an epiphany, changed the name of the paper to the National Enquirer, and begat the first celebrity gossip rag, one that would be emulated and copied ad nauseum. In the early 1970s he did the impossible feat of getting the Enquirer into supermarkets – up till then the only magazine in a rack at the checkout stands was TV Guide. He got all the supermarkets to let him install end-racks at every checkout counter and his circulation went through the roof, selling millions of copies every week – not only that, he rented out the other rack space to other magazines because his deal with the markets allowed him to do so. By the end he’d turned his little 75K investment into $400 million dollars, which is what the Enquirer sold for after his death. I really enjoyed the documentary and recommend it if you’re a fan of that sort of thing. It’s on the Flix of Net.
Then I went to Gelson’s and got a little rack of ribs for my evening snack. Whilst they looked little, there was a lot o’ meat on ‘em and it was too much food, but I ate it all up anyway.
After that, I watched the first forty minutes of the Studio Ghibli film entitled The Tale of Princess Kaguya, from the director of the wonderful amimes, Grave of the Fireflies and Only Yesterday. His style if very different from Miyazaki, but equally as beautiful in its own way. I’m really enjoying it so far, and will finish it this evening. It’s quite a long film, clocking in at 135 minutes.
I then typed up the liner notes for our next release, listened to it again, to combine some short tracks, took a shower and that was that.
Oh, and I happened to make an amazing find on a thing called the Internet. I found three videos from the series Likely Stories, which aired on either HBO or Showtime, can’t remember which. First, I found what was the precursor to Outside the Box – a musical version of The Elephant Man via a faux coming attractions trailer for cable. This was done in 1982, long before the movie The Tall Man “got” the same idea.
Then I found another of my faux coming attractions on cable, this for Barry in Concert. This one is quite fun – my back-up singers from left to right are Gracie Moore Poletti, Marsha Kramer Keller and Penny Peyser. I wrote and directed this one and Elephant.
Finally, for the show’s final season, producer David Jablin wanted to spoof the James Bond title sequences so he called and asked me to write him a Bond song – I did, and the result was Heartbreaker – Jablin directed the sequence to my song. The vocalist became Paul Simon’s wife – Edie Brickell.
Today, I shall get everyone else their music and we’ll concentrate on our guest star. I’ll eat something at some point, do some banking, hopefully pick up some packages, and prep the packaging for our next release, which I hope we can announce next Monday.
The rest of the week is meetings and meals, writing the Kritzerland commentary and making a show order, then we resume performances on Friday night. I’ll probably see that show and the Sunday show – and may visit after the Saturday show. We’ll see how I feel.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, get people music, I must eat, bank, hopefully pick up packages, prepare packaging and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy as a clam that we’re baaaaaack online.