Well, dear readers, our first press release for Welcome to My World has hit, so now everything is officially official. I really can’t believe we actually start our real rehearsals next Monday. I’m told Sami will be word perfect by then, so we’ll really be able to concentrate on the staging and the performance every single day. We’ll be rehearsing four hours a day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, then we have Thursday and Friday off, and then our two long rehearsal days on Saturday and Sunday (at least six hours). We have that schedule two weeks in a row, and from that point on we’re every day until we begin previews on September 10. We now return you to our regularly scheduled notes.
Yesterday. What can I tell you about yesterday that I haven’t already told you? Well, everything, since I haven’t told you anything. I was up at nine-thirty, the helper eventually showed up around eleven-thirty, and then I went and had a breakfast burrito consisting of eggs, cheese and onions, with a little side of guacamole. That was very good, and then I came home briefly, then went and picked up no packages. I came back home and did some work on the computer and at the piano, had several telephonic conversations about various and sundried things, answered many e-mails, and then the sheet music for my new song arrived via e-mail, so I took that to the piano, played through it, made some corrections and that will all be fixed this morning. Then I did a jog and then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled The Fabulous Baker Boys, starring Beau and Jeff Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer. Now, I know this will shock you dear readers, but I have never seen this film before, save for the one sequence where Michelle Pfeiffer sings Makin’ Whoopee. I can’t tell you why I never saw it because it certainly had ingredients that I knew I would enjoy, but it obviously just got away from me and I could never work up interest to even watch it on home video. But last night was the night, and it was just a delightfully delightful way to spend an evening. It’s a lovely film with terrific performances from the brothers Bridges and Miss Pfeiffer and every member of the large supporting cast. It’s well written and well directed, the photography is wonderful, and the score is up to the usual high standards of Dave Grusin. Nothing much happens in the film, but the pace of it never lags and it’s so nice to watch a film in which there are living, breathing characters instead of archetypes and clichés. The transfer on the Twilight Time Blu-ray looks just like a film from 1989 should look – it’s probably not off the camera negative and neither were, of course, the release prints. Color is great and it was just such a nice discovery all these years later.
I then went to Gelson’s and got a couple of snacks – some shrimp cocktail shrimp (no calories), some seafood salad (not a big amount) and some melon balls. I came home and ate it all up. I had a few more telephonic conversations, worked at the piano a bit more, then went through my commentary and futzed and fixed, and that was that.
Today, I’ll do the fixes on the sheet music in the morning via the telephonic device. Then I’ll go eat, jog, hopefully pick up packages, and start preparing for next week’s rehearsals by figuring out what we’re doing each day. Then I’ll jog and relax.
Tomorrow I have a lunch meeting and work session with Sami, just to get her head back into work mode, and then I have a work session later with John Boswell to go over all the music in the Kritzerland show. The rest of the week will be another little work session with Sami if we need it, and hopefully a production meeting to hammer out all the details.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have a lunch meeting and work session, jog, have a work session with John Boswell, hopefully pick up packages and then relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite films starring Jeff Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland as we sign off for now – tomorrow we will return you to the regularly scheduled notes, of course.