Well, dear readers, it is late and therefore I must write these here notes in a hurry because I have been busy working at the piano and have almost finished another song for the show I’m working on. So far I’ve either completed or am working on six songs out of the twelve to fourteen we’ll have. I forget how much I love to write songs, I really do and I really do.
Yesterday began well with a good telephonic conversation, a meeting of the minds, and the May and June Kritzerland shows will go on as planned so now I have to continue figuring out the May show. After that, I had to get myself presentable, and then I went and did an on-camera interview for a documentary about Smell-O-Vision and Scent of Mystery. I had a really good time and I’m pretty sure from the forty minutes I did they’ll have some nice bits of tid.
Then I had to go directly to a lunch with Larry Cohen and his actress friend Laureen Landon and that was a riot, I must tell you. We all told many lively and amusing stories. Larry is a wonderful raconteur of the old school and those kinds of lunches are just precious. Then I picked up my Freshly meals and came home. Once here I had some annoying PayPal junk to deal with – some guy files a dispute and says we shipped it to the wrong address and that he hasn’t gotten his package. He puts his correct address in the dispute. I find the invoice and guess what – it’s a different address, which is where we shipped it. And right there on the dispute page is this different address, so obviously he never changed it, but is acting like it’s our fault somehow that we shipped to the address that was given to us. The responses went back and forth and he wouldn’t close the dispute until I came on strong – but we were also able to reroute his package and thanks to that he’ll actually get it today. I gave him that message and told him I didn’t care if he shut it down or not because PayPal would as soon as the tracking showed delivered – at that point he finally shut the dispute down. These people. All he had to do was see that PayPal had a wrong address and e-mail us and be nice about his screw-up. But noooooo, we must have drama.
After that I had several telephonic conversations, proofed packaging for our next release, so that’s off to the printers, then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched another Claude Lelouch film that I hadn’t seen, another more recent one called What War Will Bring. Now, you’d think from that title and the box art which is filled with war images, that the film would be a war film. Of course it isn’t. The original French title is more along the lines of What Love Will Bring, which is what the film is about. It’s really autobiographical and has tons of characters and stories and like so many of his films you don’t see the connective tissues because he plays with time and you sit there wondering, as always, how it all comes together, but he’s a magician and it does by the end and you’re suddenly always overcome by emotion when that happens, at least I am. And the coda of the film actually went in a very small way into GEE territory, but not in the right way, I think – the way the coda was presented was a little confusing, but I didn’t mind it. The look of the film is terrific, and there is a lot of movie references and there’s a character who is the young Lelouch and that’s played by a young actor who could have been his twin when Lelouch was younger. The music is lovely, as always. I love that he keeps on making films and people let him, because he really only had one big hit in his whole life and that was A Man and A Woman, but with close to fifty films it’s an astonishing career and one can only hope that there is a reckoning and reassessment of his oeuvre – critics are especially unkind to him and he’s not in favor much, but for my money he’s one of the all-time greats and I could watch his movies over and over again – in fact, you kind of have to.
After that, at ten in the evening I got an e-mail reminder of a meeting today at eleven. Now, this meeting was never formalized so to get this notice at ten at night is never going to work for me – but Richard Allen and I will go just because I want to set the lay of the land, but I’ve already written that any meeting reminder must come at least three or four days in advance and never the night before. Then I worked on the song for about ninety minutes and am very pleased with the way the long middle section, which I was struggling with, finally came out. Now I just have one more final verse to write and that one can go to the orchestrator to have the track done. Normally I wouldn’t do the tracks this early, but because it’s so easy to change the key or fix tempos or make changes, why not?
Today, I have this meeting in the morning now – Richard Allen will pick me up and drive and we’ll have breakfast with this fellow and I will give the lay of the land speech and hopefully I will not run into any resistance to anything I say. After that I’ll come back home, I’ll hopefully pick up packages, do work on the computer and at the piano, get our new release announcement ready (midnight tonight, I’m hoping), and then at some point I hope to relax.
Tomorrow is a lunch meeting at two, otherwise it’s just more of the same. Saturday I’ll be finishing casting and choosing the May show songs and getting that show on the road and then there’s a birthday dinner at six at a favorite restaurant. Sunday I hope to have a ME day. Then next week is busy with all kinds of things, as I start figuring out the songs and singers for the big Richard Sherman birthday celebration event in Beverly Hills in July.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have a meeting, hopefully pick up packages, work at the piano, get our new release ready to announce, and then relax. Today’s topic of discussion: Who are your all-time favorite divas – those extraordinary women who would deserve that title? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to be in Songland.