Well, dear readers, I have been dealing with a first – someone posted on Facebook for me to stop sending them political posts, and in all CAPS, too. I informed him that I don’t make political posts EVER, although I do respond to people who post fake stuff because it bugs me. So, clearly someone hacked me or created a fake me account, although I can find no traces of it and unfortunately the guy nuked the post – had he not I could have traced it and reported it. So, I’ve told him and others to please not nuke until I’ve gone to their page and seen it and can click on the fake me. I don’t like that there’s some fake me on Facebook, but apparently it happens all the time. I changed my password, though, just to be on the safe side. I will tell you that when I read there was a fake me a possible perpetrator did cross my mind, but who knows and really who cares? Hopefully we’ve nipped this in the bud and I did make a post on my page that if anyone gets anything like that from me to let me know and also know it’s not from me but from the fake me. And now, back to the real me.
Yesterday I was the real me all the livelong day and evening. Thanks to a telephonic call I was up at nine-thirty after about seven hours of sleep. Once up, I had lots of e-mails to answer, and answer them I did. I had a few telephonic calls, did some work on the computer, began my Stan Getz listening, which was extremely enjoyable whilst I worked. The first Stan Getz CD was called Voices, with arrangements by Claus Ogerman, a very interesting album with voices basically acting as the orchestra. I also listened to his two albums with the brilliant composer/orchestrator Eddie Sauter – the soundtrack from Mickey One, and a wonderful album called Focus. Then I listened to others with orchestrations by Don Sebesky, Richard Evans, and Lalo Schifrin, all really fine.
Then I went and had the exact same sandwich I had yesterday, a California Melt, which was just as good. This time I felt I needed and deserved a treat, so I had a side of sweet potato fries with it – excellent. Then I picked up a couple of packages, then came back home. LACC sent out an eBlast today for The Brain concert so that was good. Robert Yacko came by and picked up an Unsung Sherman Brothers CD and his Brain script and we had a nice chat. Then I did a two-and-a-half mile jog, then came home. Doug Haverty did a nice flyer for The Brain concert – here it is.
Then I sent out a rehearsal schedule to our Brain cast, so that’s done now. I also listened to the complete opera of The Crucible by the brilliant Robert Ward. I’ve talked many times of how I discovered the opera – I was in my first semester of high school and was playing Judge Danforth in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a play I just fell in love with (I would later play Reverend Hale at LACC, a production and performance I have absolutely no memory of other than the set was shaped like a donut and Cindy Williams was in it). One day I was in Hollywood and browsing LPs at Phil Harris Records and on the shelf I saw a box set called The Crucible. I thought it must be a recording of the play and I asked to see it. But it was an opera. At that time I knew nothing of opera and had never seen an opera. But something made me buy it and I took it home and played it that night and fell in love with it and the glorious music of Robert Ward. I’d forgotten it was a Pulitzer Prize winner. When the CD came out (I just missed getting it for us at Bay Cities – literally by just a day or two), I bought it and played it and I was amazed by how much of the music I remembered and had stuck with me. That was back in 1989. I haven’t played it since until yesterday. And it really is a wonder – so powerful, so beautiful, so heart-rending. There was a second pressing with a different cover and I wonder if there was a new mastering for that, because the mastering on the one I have is pretty awful – mastered at a REALLY low volume – it’s a really good recording and a shame that the company who did it really did not have good mastering folks, in fact most of their CDs don’t really sound very good. Anyway, it can be had on Amazon and I cannot recommend it highly enough – it’s a damn American masterpiece is what it is and you heard that from the real me. Then I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched the first half of a motion picture entitled The Blue Dahlia, a film noir starring Mr. Alan Ladd, Miss Veronica Lake, and Mr. William Bendix, along with Mr. Howard da Silva and Miss Doris Dowling. It’s an original screenplay by Raymond Chandler, and it’s directed by George Marshall. I always want it to be brilliant but it never is. It’s very good but something about it just isn’t quite right. The actors are wonderful, and some of the atmosphere is great, but it just doesn’t quite click on all levels. I’ll finish it up today or tonight and say more in tomorrow’s notes. After that, I listened to the George Benson/Claus Ogerman CDs, but while they have some nice things the style of them is a little too R&B funk for my taste, although Ogerman’s work is, as always, tasteful and wonderful. In fact the openings of the tracks are all incredible, then the funk immediately kicks in and there’s just too much sameness about it all. Much better is Benson’s cover version of The Beatles’ Abbey Road album – that one has orchestrations by Don Sebesky and is excellent. So, lots of listening and some relaxing.
Today, I have some writing to do, more organizing for The Brain, and then I head out to Calabasas for a bite to eat and then auditions with twenty-five students of the theatre department – I’ll end up using six to eight of them for the evening with Richard Sherman we’ll be doing out there in December. I’ll also jog and hopefully pick up some packages.
Tomorrow, I have a work session with Richard Allen for The Brain, then the Shermans are coming over and we’ll all go for a nice Eyetalian dinner, which is what Elizabeth feels like. Now that the Kay Cole recording session has been pushed into November, I’m not sure what’s happening on Friday or the weekend, although I may have something to see, and I’m sure I’ll have a nice dinner out on one of those evenings.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, hopefully have no irritants, write, organize, sup, and then audition twenty-five high school kids. 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, and hopefully we’ll catch the fake me and get him/her booted off Facebook, whilst the real me continues to be the real me.