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July 8, 2018:

THE DAY THAT WAS CERTAINLY A DAY

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, we had a real cool down after the record-breaking 117-degree heat – only 101 and right now it’s super cool outside at 82.  It’s like WINTER, baby.  A little bye bye birdie has informed me that there was yet another haineshisway.com get-together yesterday and it was ever so much fun.  Speaking of ever so much fun, I’m currently listening to a Verve Bill Evans album called Trio 64 – the first track is a jazz version of Little Lulu – it’s so great.  These Verve trio albums really good and I’m not even that much of a fan of trio albums unless they’re fantastic.  I have to get back to serious dieting because I’m starting to feel like a trio myself.

Yesterday was certainly a day.  I got just under eight hours of sleep, got up, answered a plethora of e-mails, did some organizing, but mostly wanted and needed to relax, and so I listened to lots of music – a great Sarah Vaughan two-fer, two of her Mercury albums with Quincy Jones, made when, for me, she was at her vocal peak.  The later seventies albums I find very fussy vocally. Here there is just a supple tone and simplicity, which I always enjoy.  I listened to a fun compilation of Claudine Longet singing Beatles songs, compiled from her various albums.  A good sax player called Charlie Mariano with Don Sebesky charts, and other stuff.  I’m enjoying this as much as I enjoyed going through all my classical albums a year ago. I now must locate the box that has the rest of the jazz CDs, which must be mislabeled somehow, and then whatever box has the rest of the singer CDs, because I am seriously in the mood for The Association and Harpers Bizarre and some of the classic Randy Newman stuff. But I can’t think about locating those until it cools down a bit.

Then I got ready to have a little dinner over at Hugo’s.  I arrived and was seated – I was early, since I’d stopped and picked up a package at the mail place. It was around ten after five at that point, and within ten minutes I had three families seated in close proximity.  I don’t mean families with well-behaved older kids, I mean families with TODDLERS who should not be in restaurants like Hugo’s. But these entitled rich twits of the City of Studio think they’re at Bob’s Big Boy – actually that’s just too far for these privileged people to drive.  So to Hugo’s they come, where they let their little three and four year olds do whatever they damn well please.  In one case, that included running crazily around the restaurant screaming at the top of their lungs.  The mother never said boo to this kid about being quiet, not one single word, nor did entitled daddy.  These kids grow up with zero discipline being taught that anything they do is okay. Which is why when kids grow up they are ill prepared for something called the real world.  So, it was a bit of a zoo.  Dinner was nice, but our wait person, who was nice, didn’t pay attention and so my pasta papa and small Caesar came out together.  When the wait person saw that, he took the pasta papa back to the kitchen to keep it warm, but part of what makes pasta papa special is how good it is when it’s just out.  Furthermore, even though I’d asked him to make sure the salad was dressed and to bring me a little extra dressing on the side, the salad was not dressed so he had to bring more dressing.  Then he brought the pasta papa back – and as I’d already noted, the portion just keeps getting smaller and smaller with every visit.  I don’t think there were more than four ounces of pasta.  It was good, but not AS good as last week’s, which was the best it’s ever been.  They also forgot the cheese that’s supposed to be on it, so they had to bring that. Anyway, the discussion was good, air was cleared, positivity was restored, and after I came directly home.

It was too late to start the last of the Dietrich/von Sternberg films, so instead I watched a fun interview with Dietrich, one of the extras, an interview from 1971 done for Swedish TV.  She looks pretty amazing for seventy and one only wishes the two babbling Swedish fools interviewing her were not so babbling, talking over her, and asking incoherent questions she could barely understand.  She, on the other hand, was gracious, charming, and perfectly lovely and down to earth.

After that, it was back to music, I had a little low-calorie ice cream, and relaxed.

Today I’ll sleep in again, then I’ll do more organizing and start to think about a show structure for the Sherman event, I’ll eat, I know there’s a package coming so I’ll pick that up, and then I’ll watch Devil Is a Woman on Blu and Ray.

Tomorrow and this entire week is rehearsing singers, preparing a show order and structure, casting the other two gals for the Kritzerland show, meetings and meals, and I have to begin writing the intros to the singers and songs for the Sherman event.  Those will be spoken from off-stage, so they’ll be short and sweet, but they’re important to set up the songs.  As of Monday, barring any fun surprises, I’m going to find the final three people I need and then lock the cast. 

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, sleep in, organize, think about a show structure, eat, hopefully pick up a package, and then relax.  Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them.  So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have had a day that was certainly a day.

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