Well, dear readers, is this month really near its end? I gotta tell you – June has flown by, like a gazelle doing the splits whilst singing The Last Time I Saw Paris. The last time I saw Paris was never. In fact, I haven’t seen anywhere other than Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Can you believe it? I am the untraveled Jew. And I probably never will visit any of the places I think I’d like because I’m not going alone and it’s not really looking like I’ll find anyone to go with in the near future. So, I will not see Paris, I will not see London, I will not see, Tokyo, I will not see Rome, but I will see Glendale. What the HELL am I talking about? Oh, yes, the untraveled Jew. The Untraveled Jew – that’s the title of my next novel, an unofficial sequel to The Accidental Tourist.
Yesterday, I did not see Paris, nor did I travel more than four blocks from the home environment. I think I got around eight hours of sleep somehow, and then once up it was the usual stuff. Trying to finish casting the Kritzerland show – we’re awaiting word back from one of the guy candidates – if he can do it that will help me figure out who the other guy should be. And I’m awaiting word from our potential guest star. I heard back from two potential ALS performers, neither of who can do it. So onward we go to the next. Then I went and had a Cobb salad with 1000-Island dressing and a bagel with 1-Island cream cheese.
I tell you, I believe there’s a dead rat somewhere in the walls or under the house – first off, I see the little scumsuckers outside, running about like crazy little twits. But the heat probably drove one idiot rat somewhere and it died and now I get to smell the fetid, putrid smell until it rots away completely. And now, we return you to the notes.
After lunch there were no packages to pick up so I came right home. I had a brief visit from a local CD dealer, answered a lot of e-mails, printed out some orders, and finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I finished watching Knight of Cups. I deserve some kind of award for having endured this pretentious and truly pointless terrible film, filled with artsy BS, whispered voice-overs, improvised acting that is truly horrible, and some nice classical music and pretty images. I’d watched the first forty minutes the night before. I got to the eighty-minute mark and realized there were still forty excruciating minutes left, so I went and did a jog, my first in a few weeks. That felt quite good, and then I came back and watched the other forty minutes, which were no better than the previous eighty – and then it just ended. And yes, there are people who LOVE this film and LOVE this director and we’re all idiots for not “getting” him or his films. Sorry, this is a severe case of an emperor with no cloths and a big ugly ASS hanging out. And the actors love him – they love that he lets them do whatever they want, they love that there’s no script and no one is shown anything before they walk on the set, they love getting to talk so that no one can hear let alone understand a single word they say. And then he takes a “writing” credit. My favorite Terrence Malick films aside from Badlands and some of Days of Heaven are the films he didn’t make during his twenty-year hiatus.
After that, I listened to several CDs (trying to catch up on my listening), had some telephonic conversations, and that was that.
Today, I’ll be up by nine and then I’ll mosey on out to Calabasas to attend an auction. There’s one item I’m interested in and if I can get it cheap I’ll damn well get it. But I’m always interested to see what other items go for, since I have a lot of stuff here I know they’d be interested in handling. Depending on when it finishes (although I may just leave after my item comes up, which won’t be before two-thirty) I’ll either head home and hope for the best, traffic-wise, or I’ll stay out there and sup with Sami and her mom and dad and then come home post-traffic. We shall see.
The rest of the week is meetings and meals, casting, jogging, and then seeing Mary Poppins on Saturday night in the company of Richard Sherman and his wife, which I’m sure will be fun.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, attend an auction, maybe bid on one item, eat, then come home. 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, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall begin work on my new novel, The Untraveled Jew.