Well, dear readers, hold your hats and hallelujah, BK’s gonna show it to ya. What is BK gonna show ya? Well, I’ll tell you what BK is gonna show ya because why should I withhold such things from you dear readers? BK is gonna show ya that it is November. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, it is November and it is my fervent hope and prayer that November will be a month filled with health, wealth, happiness, creativity, and all things bright and beautiful. I know many of us can use all of those things we can get, so bring ‘em on, I say, bring ‘em on.
The final day of October was restful and nice for the most part. I went to bed at four-thirty due to watching a lot of Jack Benny clips on the Tube of You. I slept eight hours and got up at noon-thirty to begin what was left of the day. I answered a few e-mails, had a couple of telephonic conversations, then I went to the mail place and picked up stuff but not the pension check, which usually arrives on the last day of the month, stopped at the local Rite Aid and got three bags of candy (rather than the seven or eight I’d usually get for the Studio City Halloween), and one of those bags was fairly small – the other two had about two hundred pieces of candy in them, which I figured would be more than enough. Then I stopped at Gelson’s, got two chicken enchiladas, two chicken tenders, a small thing of sour cream, and then came home and ate it all up, putting a small bit of sour cream on the enchiladas. It was very good and not too much food. I listened to lots of music by lots of composers, including more wonderful music by Michael Conway Baker, with whom I’m having a fun e-mail back-and-forth. It does look like I’ll be able to issue an album by him on Kritzerland – just have to work out those details in the next day or two.
I saw Grant Geissman, who’s recuperating from some minor surgery – doing better now, but still not fully recovered, which will take some weeks. And then I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, just prior to the trick or treaters starting to arrive, I watched a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled The Ghost of Sierra De Cobre, something I’d never heard of before. It sounded like it might be interesting. It wasn’t. I fell asleep three times trying to get through it and it’s only eighty minutes. What this actually was was a failed TV pilot, written and produced by Joseph Stefano right after he left The Outer Limits. It was kind of a Twilight Zone wannabe with more horror to it. The failed pilot starred Martin Landau, Diane Baker, and Miss Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers. Well, not really Mrs. Danvers, but clearly the writer just took Mrs. Danvers and changed her name then got the actress who played her. This was filmed in 1965, which means she was most likely filming this while playing Medea in the round at Valley Music Theatre in Woodland Hills, which I saw. It’s very well photographed by Conrad Hall. When it didn’t sell, Stefano wrote and directed twenty-eight minutes of filler to pad out the run time to eighty minutes. The pilot version plays better, of course, because the padding is just that – padding. The original director, Robert Stevens, was ill during shooting, so Stefano replaced him, a problem what with Stefano not really being a director. The quality of the long version is excellent. The quality of the pilot is horrible.
Unlike the four or five hundred trick or treaters we’d get in Studio City, here we had maybe twenty-five at the most, so there’s a lot of candy left. And unfortunately, I ate a lot of it already. Oy and vey. After that, I just listened to music, switched up the show order for the Kritzerland show because the original show order didn’t quite work with the stuff I had to cut.
Today, I have some liner notes to write, I’ll eat something light but amusing, perhaps another turkey sandwich, which I enjoyed the other day, I’ll hopefully pick up packages, then we have our second Kritzerland rehearsal. Then I go directly to our evening rehearsal, where we will have our entire company save for one gal and one kid, who’s now missed ten rehearsals due to recurring illness. Luckily he knows what he’s doing and I don’t anticipate making any changes in the kid stuff.
Tomorrow we should have our full cast again, save for the kid, and that will be good. Saturday we’ll do at least one run if not two, then we have our stumble-through, then Sunday we do a run-through, then I have to run home, get ready, and then do our sound check and show. And then it’s straight ahead run-throughs until we hit tech.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, write, eat, hopefully pick up packages and the pension check, have a Kritzerland rehearsal, do a run-through, and then relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What was your favorite Halloween costume you ever wore? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland on this first day of November, and it is my fervent hope and prayer that November will be a month filled with health, wealth, happiness, creativity, and all things bright and beautiful.