Well, dear readers, I’m still enjoying my ME time, but am starting to get antsy, which is what always happens when I have two weeks to have ME time. So, I suspect I’ll actually do some work over the next two weeks. But I did enjoy a quiet day with some fun stuff.
I got eight hours of sleep, not arising until almost noon. Once up, I did the usual things – answered e-mails, listened to music, and then going to the mail place to pick up some mail and packages. I stopped at Gelson’s right after that and bought two chicken breasts and some mushrooms, came home and sautéed the breasts, the mushrooms, and some onion, made about four ounces of bow tie pasta, and then put the chicken and accouterments on the pasta and ate it all up. It was very good, actually and actually it was very good.
After that, I continued listening to the Previn CDs – some really great stuff in there, and music I’ve never heard, so that’s always fun. I found some music I needed, chose a few more songs, cast our final young person, and listened to yet more music.
And that’s the way it was. I also forgot to look back at the rest of 2018, so perhaps now would be a good time to do that. I left off as I began to plan the birthday concert for Richard Sherman. We had many meetings with the City of Beverly Hills. At those meetings were Richard’s son Greg, musical director Richard Allen, me, and a conductor of an orchestra made up of lawyers who’d somehow become part of the package. I believe he originally thought the show was going to be all about him but we made sure he knew at the first meeting that it was, in fact, going to be mostly singing, with four slots for his orchestra, within a certain amount of total time.
And so, over a couple of months we cast the show, got really great people, assigned the material, and each person came to my house to have one rehearsal. Everyone had one goal in mind – to make a beautiful show for Richard. That said, I would be slightly remiss if I didn’t say there was some drama and really unnecessary drama along the way, caused by less than a handful of people. That was irritating, but I left it to Greg to ultimately deal with it, which he did. I’m not going to go into it, but even the day of the show there was so much drama with the ticket situation, all caused by one person and one person only, and people who’d had their tickets for months suddenly didn’t have them, thanks to this person causing issues. It was a hideously disgusting situation and some people just left rather than deal with it. In the end, we got mostly everyone in and thanks to the person whose fault all this was, there were even about fifteen empty seats. You could cut the tension with a knife and since I was going out first I knew I had to do something, I just didn’t know what. So, out I went and the first thing out of my mouth was, “I’m so excited to be here tonight because they didn’t have my ticket.” Well, the laugh was so huge and it completely broke the tension. I laughed and said, “Too soon?” It was all great after that. The concert could really not have gone better, save for one aspect of it that at least went by quickly, and everyone had a great time and I know Richard loved every minute of it. That was a real highlight of the year.
And then it was more Kritzerland shows, and mostly honing and finessing A Carol Christmas. We spent many meals, Doug and I, going line by line through the script, making sure everything was doing what it needed to do. By that time, I’d pretty much finished the songs, and Richard Allen had done a great job creating the tracks. We had a private reading in my living room, and it went very well.
Of course, all during that time we were releasing CDs – we actually released more this year than we have in at least three years. Then we began the A Carol Christmas rehearsals. The show was very difficult to cast, but we got it done. We did lose a couple of people early on, and we had to replace a cast member just a week before we opened, but in the end I was pretty pleased with how it all came out. Kay Cole came in and choreographed two numbers, while I staged everything else, and Tesshi Nakagawa did a wonderful, fluid set, and Morgan Gannes did terrific costumes, and Sabrina Torres did nicely with the lighting. The reaction to the show has been really satisfying and we’re now in our final two weeks of the run.
And that was pretty much 2018 – a happily creative and bountiful year, that was very difficult in other areas. I hope all that rights itself in 2019.
Today, I’ll get up when I get up, I’ll finish choosing songs, I’ll eat, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, and I may do a little writing, and I do have another set of liner notes to do, for a great soundtrack project that’s happening sooner than I thought.
Tomorrow I may be doing some kind of Skype interview if someone can talk me through how to do it – I know nothing of Skype. Otherwise, it’s more of the same. Friday we resume performances of A Carol Christmas – I now know several people coming that night, so I’ll be there because we’re going to eat afterwards. Then we play Saturday night, and Sunday matinee. I believe the matinee is, as usual, either sold out or close to it, and I’m hoping that Friday and Saturday are full, too. And then Monday is our Annual Christmas Eve Do, so I have to do a Costco run for that lovely event so I can get everything I need.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, get up, finish choosing songs, eat, hopefully pick up packages, write, listen to music and perhaps watch something. 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, having enjoyed part two of our look back at the year that was.