Well, dear readers, this week is flying by, like a gazelle with a Pez machine. Does anyone still buy Pez machines? I found some slightly rare ones while cleaning out a drawer last night – the six were my very first eBay auction win back in 1997 or thereabouts. I won the auction in those wild and wooly days, and actually met the seller at a coffee shop in Culver City. Sadly these Pez machines have not gone up in value. I probably got my first Pez dispenser around 1956 at Ralph’s Five-and-Dime next to Big Town Market, where I had my first slice of pizza. But Pez machines remain successful to this very day – it’s amazing how a simple little thing like that can have such longevity, isn’t it? But there are some vintage Pez dispensers that go for very big money – right now on eBay there are vintage ones ranging from 100 bucks up to over a thousand bucks. There is a huge collection, seventeen display cases of machines – the asking price is 23K. I always like the little Pez things but stopped using them around junior high. Perhaps I’ll go get some Pez candies and load up my dispensers – I think, though, that I just saw one of mine that was worth a couple hundred bucks, so that one I’ll leave alone. Now, I wonder if any of my Beanie Babies are worth anything. It’s always amazing to me what I find when I go through stuff. There was also five Godzilla candy dispensers a la Pez in that same drawer. What in the HELL am I talking about Pez for?
Yesterday was a not unpleasant day. I spent the morning hours setting up the Brown Paper Ticket sales – getting our seating chart there, learning how everything worked (they have the BEST customer service I’ve ever seen), and then we went live. I then did the Facebook event page. But just prior to doing that stuff, I’d already picked up the 100 booklets of Unsung Sherman Brothers for signing. By the time I was finished with everything it was already about one. The helper came by and picked up all the Unsung Sherman Brothers invoices and got other stuff to ship.
Then Richard Sherman arrived. He’d had a meeting and was still coming down off of it, so we just chatted for a bit, and then he sat down and began to sign. The whole thing only took about twenty-five minutes. Then he wanted to hear the three Roman Holiday songs all mixed and mastered, so I played him those and he just loved them. Then he went on his merry way and it was about four o’clock by then and so I rustled up some grub – Wacky Noodles with some sautéed chicken breast. I made the same two cups of bow tie pasta as the other day, but for whatever reason, it seemed like less of it this time. Go know. It was really good, and I ate it all up whilst sitting on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I finished watching Salem’s Lot. It has some very effective things in it, but it also meanders here and there and as I’ve said, I just don’t care for David Soul. But Bonnie Bedilia is just great, as is James Mason, Geoffrey Lewis, and in smaller roles the wonderful Marie Windsor and Elisha Cook, Jr. It’s photographed well, and some of Tobe Hooper’s work is excellent and Hitchcockian in style, which was his intention. The score by Harry Sukman is very good, too.
I then watched the first thirty minutes of the new Criterion Blu and Ray of Val Lewton’s The Cat People, which, for me, should more accurately be called Jacque Tourneur’s The Cat People. I’m enjoying it more than I ever have before, and I think that’s due in great part to the beautiful transfer. I’ll say more when I’ve finished it.
I cleaned out the aforementioned drawers, too, and then I finally relaxed and listened to music.
Today, I’m truly hoping for another day without irritants, and I still am without my final cast member for the Kritzerland show and today’s the day when I either settle on someone or do without the third girl, which would be just fine. I have some writing to do, too, and I will of course eat, jog, hopefully pick up some packages, and do some errands and whatnot.
Tomorrow and Friday are more of the same, with a meeting tomorrow morning with the choreographer of The Brain, then I have other stuff to do on each day. I know not what the weekend holds, other than perhaps a dinner out.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, hopefully cast our final gal, write, eat, jog, hopefully pick up packages, and relax. 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, after which I shall look lovingly at my Pez machines won in my very first eBay auction, perhaps even buying some Pez candy to insert in them.