Well, dear readers, there I was, sitting at the computer like so much fish at around six o’clock in the evening. I’d just finished listening to a very nice Lyrita CD of a composer called Malcolm Williamson. The final five tracks were a piano sonata and after hearing a bit of it I knew I didn’t need to have that, so I highlighted those tracks and deposited them into the trash. I do this ALL the time. But something seemed awry and it was because in iTunes it’s alphabetical by first name, so I was in the M’s. But just above the M’s were the A’s, as in Alan. Apparently at some point during the day I’d highlighted Alan Rawsthorne for some reason and so when I highlighted Malcolm it deposited everything above it back to Alan in the trash. Now, that might sound amusing if the number of tracks it put into the trash wasn’t 11,000. And I cannot tell you how close I’d come to emptying the trash, but thankfully my eye caught the problem in time.
So, I thought, okay, easy/breezy, I’ll just highlight everything in the trash and drag it back to iTunes. Well, no, can’t do that and I’m not sure why. You cannot mass highlight in the trash, nor can you drag directly from the trash into iTunes – the tracks have to go on your desktop first, then into iTunes. So, yes, I had to sit there and highlight every single track separately and I could only put fifteen on the desktop at a time because if I put more than that it became unwieldy and I couldn’t keep track of what was going in. I literally sat at the computer from six to after midnight doing this, but finally got them all back in, random checked everything, and then nuked the trash. Yes, that was how I spent the evening and I didn’t even listen to music since all the Previn stuff I would have listened to and caught up on was in the A’s and had been nuked. And of course that was the last stuff to go back in. I gotta tell you. Irritated? Oh my, yes.
Prior to that, I got eight hours of sleep, got up, answered e-mails, had some telephonic conversations, the helper came by and picked up the Indiegogo stuff, and then I went and picked up some packages, got some Taco Bell, and came back home. I ate up the foodstuffs, had more telephonic calls, then listened to a CD, after which I promptly nuked 11,000 tracks into the trash. The rest you know and you know the rest.
I did take a brief break and checked out the new Blu and Ray of Horror of Dracula from the Warner Archive. It’s taken from the same raw scan the BBC did back in 2007 – it probably could have used a fresh scan. Now, the BBC and Lionsgate did their color correction based on nothing and just went their own way and it didn’t look very good. Warners have happily used a dye transfer Technicolor print for their color timing and it’s so much better. Right from the main titles you get an actual blue sky rather than the mud you got on the UK disc. People are complaining it’s too dark and yes it’s darker than the previous home video transfers including the UK Blu-ray – but those have all been too light. Someone who owns and has screened an IB Tech 35mm says the dark is there in that print, so it appears to be accurate, but these people have to have something to bitch about or they’re just not happy.
Then it was back to the trash and getting everything back into iTunes – I’m happily listening to some atonal music, which suits my mood VERY much right about now.
Today, I’ll sleep in, I’ll finish choosing songs and get folks their music, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, eat, and then relax and watch Horror of Dracula.
Tomorrow we resume performances of A Carol Christmas, our final two weekends. I’m hoping we really pack the joint. I haven’t gotten numbers for this weekend but they haven’t really been that accurate anyway. I have friends coming so I’ll attend and then we’ll go out and sup after. Then we play our Saturday night and Sunday matinee shows, and the very next evening it’s our Annual Christmas Eve Do.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, sleep in, finish choosing songs, hopefully pick up packages, eat, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What were your favorite network or cable TV shows of 2018? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have retrieved 11,000 tracks from the trash, and having learned the important lesson to not nuke until absolutely certain one is nuking only what wishes to nuke – selective nuking is what I shall call it.