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July 11, 2015:

GET YOUR KICKS ON ROUTE 66

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, I must write these here notes in a hurry for she of the Evil Eye will be here all too soon and I must get a decent night’s beauty sleep so that I can be fresh and chipper all the livelong day.  Why do I keep getting e-mails for hair removal?  I don’t have that much hair to remove, baby, and I’m keeping what there is, so don’t bug me with your damn hair removal e-mails.  I wonder if anyone ever responds to the hair removal e-mails?  Or any spam e-mail?  Since the answer to that is probably no, one can only wonder what these butt cheeks get out of inundating us with their stupid spam.  A secret thrill?  Can’t they go get their kicks on Route 66 instead of annoying everyone with an endless stream of toilet paper e-mails?  I mean, how much Viagra and Cialis do I really need?  Don’t answer that.  How many personal spy cameras do I need?  How many millions of dollars need to be put into my own personal bank account absolutely free?  Well…  But they arrive one every two minutes like an annoying boil.  Do they still have annoying boils?  Do boils still exist?  Do corns and bunions still exist?  I have lost my train of thought.  Not my airplane of thought, mind you, nor my boat of thought – no, I have lost my train of thought.  My thought is on a train to nowheresville, man.  Ooh, I just turned into a beatnik, man.

Yesterday was a kooky day.  I got a little under nine hours of blessed sleep, then got up.  I decided I needed a change in routine so instead of lunching at Jerry’s Deli and having one of my usual dishes, I decided to make two low-cal tortilla things, each filled with a little scrambled egg, a little low-fat cheese, and a little salsa.  It was very tasty and under four hundred calories.  Then I did some work on the computer, we confirmed our final two cast members and now only have to find a guest star.  I did some Kritzerland work, then picked up one teeny-tiny package and came back home.  I assigned most of the songs and will wait until playing through stuff today before I assign the others, but all the singers will have their music by the end of the day.  I’m told Guy Haines WILL be recreating his marvelous version of Mr. Previn’s The Faraway Part of Town in this show.  Then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.

Before I dug into The Loved One, I watched a motion picture I’d been wanting to watch again, Agatha, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman, a fictional mystery yarn about the real-life mystery of Agatha Christie’s gone missing for eleven days.  That real-life mystery was explained away only as amnesia.  But the fictional story is a good one and plausible.  As I said last time I wrote about it, Miss Redgrave is fantastic as Agatha Christie and should have been up for an Oscar.  Mr. Hoffman isn’t up to her level and at times he’s just downright odd (the film’s producer, David Putnam, walked off the film and swore he’d never work with Hoffman again) – he’s fine in a handful of scenes.  Timothy Dalton plays Miss Christie’s husband and he’s good.  The photography of Vittorio Storaro is stunning and the musical score by Johnny Mandel (replacing a score by Howard Blake, although Mr. Blake’s arrangements of some standards remain in the movie) is simply one of my favorite scores of the 1970s.  I love the whole atmosphere of the movie and in a way it’s a shame they didn’t have another actor in it instead of Mr. Hoffman.  The film was a box-office failure and I can’t remember what the critics thought of it, but I pull it out once every eight years or so and I always enjoy it.

After that, I moseyed on over to the Eclectic Café for a meeting with the set designer for Welcome to My World.  We went over the details of the set, made some adjustments, talked about the one or two props that have to be made and he’ll actually start building some of it towards the end of this month, just to get a jump on things.  I tried a new pasta – farfalle in a light cream sauce with chicken and I must say I fell in love with it.  I didn’t have my usual Caesar salad to start.  Then I came home and sat on my couch like so much fish again.

I watched the first hour of The Loved One and will finish it up today.  This movie simply could not be made today in the PC world we live in.  But for 1965 this thing was so outrageous – there really had never been anything like it.  I’ll have more to say when I finish.

Then I just did more work on the computer, then surfed the Internet a bit, looking for information on my top guest star candidate.  She’s still alive, but I can find not one whit of information on where she might be.  The last interview I can find is from 2000 and at that point she was working in the AFTRA offices, having retired from singing.  We’re going to call AFTRA on Monday and see if they have contact info on her.

Today, I’ll be up early, I’ll jog, then go do stuff.  At noon I have a work session with our musical director and we’ll play through all of the songs so I can finish assigning and decide if there are any duets or put-togethers.  As soon as that’s done, Sami and her mom are coming over.  We’ll go through some of the songs and maybe some of the monologues so I can make sure she’s remembering everything we worked on.  She’s leaving at the end of next week for three weeks of summer camp – she loves this camp – I wish she wasn’t going.  But she’s promised she will work on the show for one hour each day and as long as she sticks to her word, she’ll probably be ready to go when she gets back, which is just three days before we begin rehearsals.  I’m sure we’ll all grab a bite to eat, and then I’m just relaxing.

Tomorrow I’m really not sure what’s going on.  Hopefully someone will let me know.  Monday I have a lunch meeting near LACC, and the rest of the week is meetings and meals, figuring out the show order and writing the commentary and attending to a lot o’ stuff.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, do stuff, have a work session, have another work session, eat, and relax.  Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite films of Miss Redgrave and Mr. Hoffman?  Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, wishing the spammers would go get their kicks on Route 66.

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