Well, dear readers, it was just one of those things, just one of those horrible things and just the kind of thing you never want to happen when you’re only ninety minutes from writing and posting these here notes. At around ten-thirty I was looking at some film clips of old Los Angeles (if you’d like to see these extraordinary clips go to the discussion board and yesterday’s topic – I believe they either start on page three or four of the posts. And they are extraordinary and mind-blowing. Anyway, back to the horrible happenstance. At ten-thirty I happened to move my cursor thing to my desktop thing, where I got the really irritating spinning Apple wheel thing, which is like the devil incarnate. I let it spin because I could still look at clips and be on the Internet, but after ten minutes of the spinning I knew something was wrong. I brought up the “force quit” window and sure enough it said the dreaded “Finder not responding.”
This has only happened once before in the four years I’ve had this machine. So I had no choice but to use the “relaunch Finder” force quit button, which I did. It relaunched Finder all right, but my entire desktop’s contents weren’t there – I had an empty desktop. Now, I don’t know about you, dear readers, but I don’t want an empty desktop that’s devoid of all that I have on it – that just makes me nervous, anxious, and really REALLY angry. I waited several minutes and nothing happened. So I clicked on “restart” as in restart the damn computer. It went to gray but never shut off. This made me more nervous, more anxious, and really really REALLY angry. So, I used the power button and shut the damn thing down. Then I turned it on and left the room and played the piano for about five minutes, which is four minutes more than it should need to be up and running. I came back and it was not up and running – it was gray and not running. That was crazymaking, so I went and put my car away. I came back and it was still gray and not up and running. Finally the desktop showed up after another five minutes and all my stuff was thankfully there. Then the computer, as is its wont when it’s starting up anew, spazzed out and was like molasses. It launched iCal and iTunes as it should but was very slow getting to the launch of Word and as soon as Word did launch it was so spazzy I seriously considered putting my fist through the screen.
Finally my working documents came up and I minimized them – but that wasn’t the end of it. Nooooo, Word immediately launched an update, which, frankly, I think was the cause of the original spinning wheel Finder problem. So, I did the update and it took almost fifteen minutes to complete what the screen said should take one minute. THAT was sickening. So sickening that I thought it was never going to complete so I fired up the laptop and as soon as I did that, it completed. So I shut down the laptop, relaunched Word and then everything seemed to be fine. Whew! But what an annoying end of the evening, as you can imagine. And there you’ve had The Curious Case of the Disappearing Desktop by Erle Stanley Gardner.
Yesterday was another six hours of sleep day – the previous day’s six hours didn’t bother me, but yesterday’s did. I had the first visitor and that didn’t take long. Then I answered e-mails and had telephonic calls, and then the second visitor arrived, our very own Mr. Nick Redman. We had a nice chat, we looked at some Blu-rays and then he went on his merry way. He left two Blu-rays for me (three more to come later) – The Best of Everything and A Month in the Country.
Then I went and picked up one package, got a spicy Eyetalian Subway sandwich for my meal o’ the day, and then came home. The package contained the new/old Harper Lee thing called Go Set a Watchman. It already has many reviews on Amazon from people giving it five stars who admit freely they haven’t actually finished more than a couple of chapters. Yes, that’s the kind of world we live in. Knowing the little I know about this, I have very mixed feelings about reading it, but I probably will. Then the replacement helper came by, and she’ll start organizing the Indiegogo stuff, which will probably take a week as it’s a lot to do and we have to be very careful and organized so that everything makes perfect sense. It’s daunting with 400 contributors, but she’ll get it done and we’ll go over at all. Once we know all that, then I can order the mugs and T-shirts (I found about fifty Kritzerland T-shirts in the garage left over from when I gave those out to you dear readers one holiday season. We have to also order about four Kritzerland jackets, too. After that, I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled The Best of Everything, a potboiler (based on the potboiler novel by Rona Jaffe) from 1959, a Fox production in Cinemascope and Color by Deluxe, starring beautiful Hope Lange, Suzy Parker, Diane Baker, Martha Hyer, Miss Joan Crawford, Stephen Boyd, Louis Jourdan, Robert Evans and others. If you want to see where Mad Men got at least some of its early inspiration look no further than this film. It’s a very enjoyable film, and Miss Crawford is especially colorful in the way only she can be. For some reason, I always thought Suzy Parker had an early death, but she didn’t – she married actor Bradford Dillman and lived until she was seventy. Who knew? It’s a shame Hope Lange didn’t have the career she should have – she’s really beautiful and a wonderful actress. And interestingly, she, too died at seventy the same year that Suzy Parker died. The transfer is lovely – it won’t please the Blue Brigade who find all of the recent Fox transfers of classic films too blue. You dear readers know how I feel about THAT – for me the look of Fox films of that era is very consistent and this new transfer is of a piece with other recent transfers, which I feel replicates the look of these films wonderfully. There IS a lot of blue in the costumes and the lighting – it’s not as prevalent in the DVD but it’s there but the DVD just looks muddy and a bit dull compared to this new transfer. There is a bit of weird fringing around Miss Lange’s dresses occasionally, but it’s also on the DVD so must be inherent in the elements. This is a very enjoyable movie so if you like this kind of film you’ll really enjoy this disc.
After that, I had a couple of those low-cal tortilla things, one filled with low-cal cheese and salsa, the other with a little bit of butter – just right. Then we had The Curious Case of the Disappearing Desktop and you know how I felt about THAT. Damn them, damn them all to hell.
Today, I have to write commentary, I’ll eat, I’ll hopefully pick up packages, and then I’ll hopefully finish the commentary.
The rest of the week is meetings and meals. Saturday night it’s a dinner party at neighbor Tony Slide and Bob Gitt’s house – looking forward to that. Not sure what’s happening on Sunday.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, write, eat, hopefully pick up packages, write, and jog. 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 that The Curious Case of the Disappearing Desktop by Erle Stanley Gardner has been solved.