Well, dear readers, this year is flying by, like a gazelle eating Turkish Taffy and Swedish Fish at the same time – thus creating a new candy called TurkiSwedi Taffish. And I’m happy to say that the first day of 2019 turned out to be a lovelier than lovely day any way you look at it and I looked at it from every possible way including upside down, which is, believe me, very difficult for an old Jew.
The day began with me arising a little later than planned. I set the alarm for ten and it did indeed go off at ten, but it was sixty-one degrees, so I turned on the heat and got back into bed. I was actually in bed earlier than usual, considerably so, after our New Year’s Rockin’ Eve Bash. But it took me quite a while to fall asleep as the brain centers were alive with the sound of book thoughts. In any case, I fell right back asleep and got up at eleven-thirty after nine hours of sleep, I think.
Once up, I had some nice e-mails to wake up to that pretty much turned the other night’s sour back to sweet, so that was good. After thirty minutes or so, as soon as I was coherent, I began writing a new book. I’d written a couple of rough pages a few weeks ago, but I pretty much rewrote them completely because I’d done some research and needed the details of what’s going on to be correct. I wrote about five pages right away. Then I took a brief break and decided to do the impromptu get-together that I’ve done for the last two years, so I invited a few folks to come at four.
Then I continued writing, ultimately doing eight pages, which was pretty good for a first day on a new book. Then I went to Gelson’s and got ingredients for Wacky Noodles with Wacky Chicken, then stopped at K’s Donuts and got a dozen assorted donuts. Then I came home. I had a little tuna pasta salad left, too. I continued writing and got to page ten, so that was a really good first day of writing a new book.
Then I took a shower and then began making the Wacky Noodles with Wacky Chicken. That took about thirty minutes and I finished it just as the first person arrived, Richard Allen. He was followed by Doug Haverty and his ever-lovin’ Dorathy, and then Marshall Harvey, who brought me a present – a Blu and Ray of King Cohen, the documentary about my pal Larry Cohen. That was it – small group. I’d invited a few others but due to sickness or other plans they could not attend. Everyone partook of the Wacky Noodles with Wacky Chicken, some even had second helpings. And much of the tuna pasta salad was consumed. I myself had two helpings of the Wacky Noodles with Wacky Chicken. The conversation was sparkling and fun and then Doug found out that LA critic Don Grigware had just posted his yearly awards, the Eddon Awards, his choices for the best of what he’d seen and reviewed last year. Don awards multiple people in each of his categories – these aren’t nominations, everyone listed is a winner. And I’m happy to report that A Carol Christmas fared rather well in the Eddons: Best Production (Intimate Theater), Best Director (li’l ol’ me), Best Performance (Hartley Powers as Carol, and then listed together, Janet Wood, Debi Tinsley, and John Schroeder for their roles, and finally Best CD. That was a lovely way to start the New Year. I’ve won several Eddons over the years – all these LA awards are fun but kind of meaningless – but winning for this particular show is very sweet.
After that, everyone dug into the donut box. People tended to do half of this donut, half of that, which was fun and allowed more flavors in the mouth. I myself had half of the chocolate peanut butter thing and half of the chocolate whipped cream thing. The impromptu gathering ended around seven. I cleaned up a bit, then sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched the documentary King Cohen, about filmmaker Larry Cohen. It was lots of fun because Larry is lots of fun, and they had interesting people talking about him. He’s a character and so the best of the documentary is him, yakking on about his projects and how he did things. It was really fun for me, since Larry and I worked together and because we’ve become friends, and because both his wife and ex-wife were in it and I know both of them, too. My only nitpick with the entire thing was that they talk about every film he wrote and/or directed, and his many screenplays both produced and unproduced, but there was not a single mention of Levi or the fact that he’d written a big musical with the Sherman Brothers or that he was still close friends with Richard Sherman. I understand that a lot of it was shot before we did the show – in fact, they’d just started screening it when Levi opened, and several people involved in it came to see the show, but it’s no small thing to have written a musical with the Sherman Brothers and it deserved at least a mention.
After that, I decided to write more pages – I ended up doing fifteen, which may be the most pages I’ve ever written on the first day of writing a new book. Last year I’d done twelve, which I think was a record then. So that was a REALLY good first day of writing a new book and capped what was really a nice first day of a New Year and may it only continue that way and get even better. And I hope all you dear readers had a lovelier than lovely first day of the year.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll write, hopefully at least ten pages – on this book my goal will be ten to fifteen pages a day, but if I go over or under that’s fine. I’ll eat, hopefully pick up packages, hopefully continue along the sweet path, write more, and then try to get the Kritzerland commentary done. We have to get all the booklets to the printers – but both printer and pressing plant have been closed for almost two weeks, so nothing will happen until next week.
Tomorrow, we have a work session for the Kritzerland show, otherwise it’s writing and whatever else comes up, same for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It will be weird not going to the theater to see A Carol Christmas this year, but I’m happy in the knowledge that if all goes according to Hoyle there will be at least one production in the mid-west towards the end of this year. Then on Monday we begin the Kritzerland rehearsal week.
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, hopefully continue along the sweet path, and try to get the Kritzerland commentary done, as well as figure out what our upcoming release schedule is. Today’s topic of discussion: How did you spend the first day of 2019? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy, VERY happy, to have had such a nice first day of 2019 and for having such a productive first day of writing a new book.