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October 25, 2015:

SCARY MOVIE

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, as we approach Halloween, it’s always fun to watch a really scary movie. I have a love/hate relationship with really scary movies – if they’re good movies I tend to go with the flow, although I hate “Boo” moments – I tend to like squirming tension in my scary movies. As I sprig of a twig of a tad of a lad of a youth I saw all the sci-fi and horror films I could. Way back when in 1954 I saw a sneak preview of a movie called Target Earth at the Baldwin Theater.

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Well, when the big ol’ giant robot appeared that was just too scary for the likes of me and I ran from the theater, then ultimately snuck back in and watched through my fingers. Horrors of the Black Museum and The Fly, both in 1959 and both at the Picfair Theater, sent me running up the aisles from the scary parts. Then but a year later I saw what would remain the scariest film I’d ever seen for almost a decade – Psycho. Psycho changed everything – there had never been anything like it. It did not play by the rules, and there is nothing scarier than a movie that doesn’t play by the rules. And because the first scary scene was also the most violent scene in movie history up to that point, everything that followed it was 100 times scarier. At the end of the film in the cellar, it seemed like the entire audience rose off their collective seats and screamed loudly. The next time I heard a scream like that was in Wait Until Dark several years later, and after that the next time I heard a scream like that was probably Carrie. Yes, Carrie was scary, The Omen was scary, Alien was scary. I hated all of them for scaring me and I loved all of them for scaring me.

All that as a preamble to what I viewed yesterday, which certainly ranks as one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen. But here’s the thing: It was a documentary. Not a horror movie or a suspense movie or a sci-fi movie, although it had elements of all those. No, it was a documentary entitled Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. I’m not going to go into detail as the film should simply be watched without anyone telling you how to feel. But I will say that I have an incredible distrust of cults and religions that try to control people. I also find it odd that people allow such things to happen to themselves, but I do understand that everyone has needs and that they will seek help in whatever ways they need to. This documentary is an HBO thing and was very successful and got really great reviews, and it is very well done. If you can find it and view it in this Halloween season, I can pretty much guarantee you it will frighten you, perhaps even make you scream.

Prior to watching that scary movie, I’d gotten nine hours of blessed sleep, sleeping until exactly noon o’clock. Once up, it was the usual answering of e-mails, working at the piano, and doing a bit of writing. We set our final cast member, and are just awaiting final confirmation of our guest star. I was going to have a kid or two in the show, since it’s a holiday show and that seems right, but I’m not sure I will. We’ll see how the song choices go.

I then made a repeat of yesterday’s meal, only I guess I’d made more pasta yesterday than I thought, because today’s batch couldn’t have been more than three ounces. I only had one small breast of chicken slice left, no mushrooms, so I just made the three ounces of pasta, sautéed the chicken strip and some onions and did a smaller amount of the Wacky Noodles sauce. It was basically just one okay-sized portion and that was fine by me. Then I had an apple for dessert. After that, Sami’s mom, sans Sami, came by with the hard drive containing five performances of Welcome to My World. I’d already seen the Hunter Parrish matinee, so I checked out stuff from our final performance and that’s going to be the basis of most of this – it was really good with a really great audience. There are tiny bits here and there that will grab from the other two great performances – the Hunter matinee (which has closer shots) and the third to last performance – a Friday night show I had been told repeatedly wasn’t taped, and yet, thankfully, it was. That was the performance where a little girl in the front row had spoken up at one point, which resulted in a huge laugh and I’m so happy we have that. Most of that performance is terrific, so we’ll just use those three, and if we absolutely have to have something from the other two, for transitions and things, then we have those. I made a few notes until I realized how we’d be doing it.

That took up most of the day and a little of the evening, then I went to Gelson’s and bought the food for the next three or four meals o’ the day – today being tuna sandwiches, and tomorrow and Tuesday being tuna pasta salad, which I can definitely make last two and sometimes three days. I bought some bagels, too, for the sandwiches, another onion and a red onion for the tuna pasta salad, and because the portion of my faux wacky noodles had been so small, I got some drumettes for my evening snack. I ate them up, tried to connect to the Flix of Net and couldn’t, thanks to the new modem and new network, so I had to go into my Blu-ray player’s set-up menu and it found the new network and then I was on the Flix of Net. I watched the first twenty-five minutes of a movie entitled Big Ass Spider – with a title like that you basically know that the filmmakers have no humor even though they think they do. The first scene told me everything I needed to know – a terrible way to begin the film by beginning it at the climax and then doing the tired cliché – eight hours earlier or whatever it was. I think the film wants to be an affectionate and funny homage to the big bug films of the 1950s a la Tarantula and the Bert I. Gordon films but the humor is just forced and completely unfunny, at least to me. I suppose I’ll finish it today.

Today, I’ll make some more notes on the videos, I’ll choose songs, I’ll eat tuna sandwiches, I’ll finish watching another HBO documentary I began just before writing these here notes, and I’ll relax.

Tomorrow, I’m hoping to get together with the editor so he can input all the footage into his Final Cut Pro program and get everything organized. Then I have a two-hour meeting to go to in the evening. The rest of the week is planning the Kritzerland show, hoping for a miracle, so please send all those excellent vibes and xylophones, meetings and meals and then seeing a couple of shows, too.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, make notes, 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, hoping I don’t have nightmares from the scary movie I watched.

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