Well, dear readers, let’s just get this out of the way right here and right now and also right now and right here: I am older than I was yesterday. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, I, BK, am older than I was yesterday. I don’t feel older, I don’t look older, and yet I am older. I have a new age. I believe that new age is sixty-eight, as I was sixty-seven yesterday. I don’t even know what sixty-eight means, frankly. But, as long as I feel chipper, as long as I have energy and my wits about me, sixty-eight is but a number. Well, here’s hoping that sixty-eight will be an age filled with health, wealth, happiness, creativity, and all things bright and beautiful. Sixty-seven was a year of highs and lows, with more highs, but enough lows to be truly annoying. We need the lows to go away, and the highs to rule the day, that’s what I say, and that’s what I pray. I’ll be taking a glance back at this year over the next couple of weeks, whilst wearing my wax lips and fez. Here I am just a few years ago.
Yesterday, the final day of my sixty-seventh year, was a perfectly adequate day. Nothing terrible happened, so that was good. I got about seven and a half hours of sleep, then the helper came by and we got everything organized for the shipping of a LOT of CDs. Then I did some writing, some work at the piano, then moseyed on over to Gelson’s, where I bought two hamburger patties and some small buns, along with lettuce, tomato, and onion. I came home and made myself two cheeseburgers and they were quite excellent and the whole calorie count for everything was under 750 calories.
After that, the helper came back and we sorted through a box of charts that someone has asked about using for a concert. We’ll see what happens. Then a screener arrived, this one for a motion picture entitled Spotlight. I did more work on the computer, made a recording of a song so the chart can now be made, and then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a motion picture entitled Spotlight, a film about the Boston Globe’s reportage of the Catholic priest scandals. This is now being touted as the frontrunner for the Oscars. I’m not quite all that about it, but it’s a compelling film and I liked it quite a lot. It’s rather like a modern day All the President’s Men in the way it presents the story. The cast is top-notch, with Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Brian d’Arcy James (lovely to seem him in a straight acting role – I loved working with him on the albums he did for me), Len Cariou, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, and many others. The smallest roles are cast very, very well. It’s well written and it certainly moves along and never seems like it’s 130 minutes. While I thought the direction was fine, I really didn’t like the look of it – I’m really kind of tired of digital photography, frankly. All the nuance of film is just gone. And the score by Howard Shore is kind of odd – I like Mr. Shore very much, but the music here, like in most films today, doesn’t really add much – it just kind of serves as transition music and it’s all very much the same. Contrast it with David Shire’s great score to All the President’s Men, where the music actually functions as something other than wallpaper. But those are nitpicks – it’s an important film and a fine one and I recommend it.
As soon as the credits finished, I closed my eyes for a minute and the next thing I knew it was an hour later. Then I began watching By the Sea, a DGA screener of a movie written, directed and starring Angelina Jolie Pitt and Brad Pitt. Two hours in I looked at the clock counter on the player and I was, in fact, only thirty minutes in. Yes, that’s how slow this film is. It is a perfect example of the crazy business called show. Ms. Jolie Pitt is trying to make a European art film in the style of the early 1970s, about a marriage filled with ennui, cigarettes, alcohol, and a LOT of pauses. It is the worst kind of vanity project and it’s amazing that stuff like this gets made. It will make no money, no one wants to see it, and it’s BAD. I finally had to shut it off. Part of the problem is that I have never found anything about Ms. Jolie Pitt appealing, and I basically feel that about her husband. I cannot imagine what the other ninety minutes of this film are, but I won’t be finding out.
Then I relaxed and that was that.
Today, I will do a birthday jog, I suppose I’ll eat something since not one human being has actually asked me to do anything for my actual birthday, and some screener is arriving at some point – so perhaps a quiet birthday is the way to go, unless someone surprises me and says let’s go do something.
Tomorrow is our stumble-through then show. Thursday and Friday are both busy, and I’m seeing a preview of a new show on Thursday night, and am probably going to a nightclub on Saturday night.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a birthday jog, hopefully pick up some packages, eat, and then whatever. Today’s topic of discussion: What were your favorite CD release this year? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, after which I shall spend my first day of being sixty-eight.