Well, dear readers, it is very late and I am very tired so I shall write these here notes in a hurry before I turn into a pumpkin pie. Have you ever turned into a pumpkin pie? I find when I turn into a pumpkin pie I get a face full of pie, pumpkin to be exact. I also enjoy turning into a cherry pie or occasionally I enjoy turning into a quince pie. Does anyone still wear a quince pie? I don’t know about you, but I always enjoy a hard, acid, pear-shaped fruit like quince. Actually, if the truth be told I don’t believe I’ve ever had the hard, acid, pear-shaped fruit called quince. Can you get quince at a market? Does quince come in a can? What the HELL am I talking about? And did people who wore chintz ever eat quince whilst wearing chintz, before or since?
Yesterday was a long and winding day. I got exactly eight hours of sleep, then got up and answered some e-mails, then headed directly to the home environment of Grant Geissman. He already had the new book in Quark and in our special BK font for the Hofstetter books, so he just had to do all the chapter headings in a new font we found for the title of this book, and then fix some random indentation problems, some em dash things (not many this time) and the whole thing barely took ninety minutes, and we were done and another beauty of a book has been designed thanks to the Geissman touch. I still have to do the dedication and the acknowledgements, which I’ll get to him by Sunday – and by that time I will hopefully have given the book the final proofing. I guess I can reveal the title: Murder At the Hollywood Division. We should move fairly quickly now to the next step.
After that, I came directly home and we had a two-hour Sandy rehearsal. I’ve changed up the order for the actual live show and it works really well. She read through her patter, we made some adjustments, found a really funny running gag, and I came up with something really cute to do for Here on Earth. She now has to get firm on her lyrics and learn the patter. Then Sami and her mom came over. We only worked on music – we played through almost all the songs and she’s getting them down now. I played her the latest song, which she hadn’t heard, and she and her mom absolutely loved it – I suspect it will be the final song in the show, maybe followed by a short reprise of the opening song. I also let her read through one new monologue about common core math, and that was really funny and I think will play very well.
Then we went to dinner. I had some chicken tenders. After that, I came home briefly, then went to the theater for our evening performance. Friday’s are always weird to me – the cast has had four days off, and so the rhythm and energy always take a while to kick in. The theater during act one was way too cold, and we had quite the argument about it, but I think we’ve come up with a solution that will hopefully work. LA, as always, is being totally retarded with its weather – it’s March and it was almost ninety degrees out. I knew a lot of people in attendance, including Marsha Kramer, Fred Willard and his ever-lovin’ Mary, JoAnne Worley, Barry Pearl, Sammy Williams and several others I’m forgetting, including one of the understudies from the off-Broadway production of Inside Out. After, some of us went out for a bite to eat – I had cherry pie a la mode.
Today, I shall hopefully arise after a good night’s beauty sleep. I’ll then write some liner notes, proof the layout of the book, and then at three we have a put-in rehearsal for two understudies, and at that session I’ll clean up a few things that have gotten sloppy. Then I’m sure some of us will have some food, then we do our evening performance.
Tomorrow, we have a matinee with one understudy going on, and then we have an evening performance where two understudies go on. I’ll probably be there for all of that, but come right home after to prep a new release and get all manner of things done. Next week is rehearsals for Sandy’s show, meetings and meals, and a lot of ALS stuff.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, write, proof, put-in, eat, and see a show. Today’s topic of discussion: Pie, of course. What are your favorites and where have you had the best pie ever? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall be dreaming of wearing chintz whilst eating quince.