Well, dear readers, last night I happened to watch a very good documentary on the Flix of Net entitled Atari: Game Over. Mostly it was about the video game E.T. from 1983, which was back then considered the worst video game ever made up to that point. It was critically reviled and did not sell well, and the legend had it that Atari had made something like four million units and most of them were returned from stores unsold. Legend also had it that most of those unsold units were buried in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. That urban legend has been around ever since and the failure of the game is said to have precipitated the fall of Atari, which was as swift as the company’s rise, which was one of the fastest-rising business success stories in history, in those early days of Pong. In any case, they actually did an excavation in Alamogordo after someone who worked there in that giant landfill place did three years of research and pinpointed where he thought the E.T. cartridges were buried. The director of the film (a screenwriter) made this film about the excavation, interviewing a lot of Atari people – it’s quite well done and even touching at times. In the end they don’t find millions of E.T. cartridges, but do find a large amount of assorted Atari titles including E.T.
That got me to thinking about those fun and funky video game days. In my second film, there is a shot of Leslie Nielsen playing Pong – 1981 – I’m guessing he’s having a nostalgia moment. I watched with quiet amusement as people became obsessed with this stuff, whether in arcades or especially at home on their Atari game consoles. Pac Man was huge back then, as was Frogger. I could never figure out Pac Man’s point, but I did figure out Frogger and did enjoy playing that. One of my favorite stories from back then was when I began working for Playboy on their early cable show, Playboy on the Air, back in 1982 or so – Hef loved me and Nudie Musical, which was one of his favorite movies. I became an “A” lister at the mansion, going to not only the big parties, but his weekly movie nights. It was so fascinating there, with all those celebrities and all that pre-AIDS craziness. The grotto was quite active then, but I never partook. What I partook of other than the food and the movies, was the game room, which was actually in an adjacent little guest house near the main house. Hef had installed all the latest arcade games, including Frogger and you could play for free to your heart’s content, which I did. While others were being naughty and randy, I played Frogger. This Is Your Life, BK. When we finally got the darling daughter a game console, which we still have – Colecovision I believe it was called – I made sure it had Frogger. Of course, looking back at all those primitive games is amusing today, but I must say that there was an innocence to them that is sorely lacking today. Today we get the multi-player role-play games and things like The Sims and games that are million dollar cottage industries because there is a whole generation of gamer addicts, and I do mean addicts, who literally do nothing but that. I almost want to go find the box that has our Colecovision console – it’s in the garage somewhere, but I wouldn’t even have a clew as to how you’d hook it up to today’s TVs or computers.
Well, that was a stirring opening to these here notes. Of course, the notes should have been posted an hour ago, but I was stirred, not shaken, and couldn’t stop waxing nostalgic about the long-ago halcyon days of Atari. Yesterday was a completely weird day. The spicy chicken breast from Popeye’s basically did me in. I was nauseous all night, slept only fitfully, and finally got up around ten – maybe I’d had five or six hours of sleep overall. The helper came by, and then the local CD dealer came by. Then I did some banking, then came home and got back into bed and slept for another ninety minutes, getting up at two o’clock. I was completely foggy for at least an hour, then I felt I could probably get some mild food into me, so I had a cheese omelet and a bagel and some fruit. I also took home a little thing of macaroni salad just to snack on later.
I had ALS stuff to do, and then chose a few songs – we’re still waiting to lock down the final two cast members and then I can assign and get people their stuff. Then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I finished watching a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled God Told Me To – it’s so wacky and nutty and there’s just something very entertaining about it. Tony Lo Bianco is terrific and we also get Deborah Raffin, Sandy Dennis and Sylvia Sydney, plus a great score by Frank Cordell. My friend Sammy Williams plays a sniper in the first five minutes of the film. It had to have been shot just as he was opening A Chorus Line on Broadway because there’s a shot of a movie theater showing Woody Allen’s Love and Death. I was there when it was showing and we previewed Nudie Musical with Love and Death at that very theater and I saw A Chorus Line at the matinee before our preview. Isn’t that funny? The transfer is excellent. Then I watched the documentary about Atari, which I recommend.
After that, I got some nuts from Gelson’s to snack on, and snack I did – not too many but enough to curb some hunger pangs and grumbling stomach. Then I decided to do an experiment. I played through all thirteen songs in the Sami show to see what the running time was of just the music – and it was almost exactly what I thought it would be, just under forty-five minutes. So, that was a good thing. Then I decided to read through all the monologues at the pace I really want them to be (Sami tends to barrel through them at warp speed and we’re working on that to get her to slow down and relish all the words and thoughts and fun of them), just to see if I was even in the ballpark of what I know they have to run. Well, they ran thirty-two minutes, which, added with the music, takes us to seventy-eight minutes which is just two minutes away from what I kind of want the show to run – in one act. And there’s still one long wrap-up monologue to come and one mid-sized set-up to a song. So, we may even run eighty-five minutes and that’s probably fine.
Today I really have no plans other than to write some of the Sami stuff that needs to get finished and to rearrange where some of the monologues happen. I hope to hear about our final casting choices and then I’ll gather up all that music. I have to write just a couple on intro things for the ALS show, too, but that won’t take more than ten minutes. Otherwise, I’ll relax, eat something light, and watch the new Mad Men episode.
Tomorrow and the entire week is split evenly between Sami work sessions and ALS rehearsals, and then there are some meetings and meals. I may go down to the Pasadena Playhouse on Friday for the load-in, but I’m not sure. I also may go down when the lights are being set, because I could do some pre-lighting work and get that out of the way.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, write, cast, choose songs, eat and relax. 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, where I shall dream of the Playboy mansion and playing Frogger.