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October 3, 2019:

NOT DISTURBING THE TIME/SPACE CONTINUUM

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, it is late, and I must write these here notes in a hurry so I can get them posted because to be late with the notes is to wreak havoc with the time/space continuum.  And we cannot wreak havoc with the time/space continuum, now can we?  No, we cannot.  As I type these here notes, I am listening to the sixth symphony of Mr. Allan Pettersson.  He’s a bit atonal for my taste, and yet there are occasional passages of real beauty and wonderful mood pictures, especially in this particular symphony, which is quite long at just over an hour.

Yesterday, I got about six-and-a-half hours of sleep, but I got six because the doorbell rang at ten – Fed Ex delivering a package.  Not to me, however.  I had no clew who the package was addressed to, but thankfully because it was an overnight package it had the phone number.  So, I called it and it turned out to be the folks directly across the street – someone got the address wrong.  So, the husband came and gathered up the package and all was well with the world, wrongly addressed package-wise.

Then I answered quite a lot of e-mails, had a really fun and positive telephonic call with the gentleman I’ll be calling this morning who will hopefully be our Sheridan Whiteside.  The other candidate, who was in the show I went to last night, was someone we were ready to go with and then this fellow found out we were doing it and messaged me about it – a bucket-list role for him.  And because the other guy kind of took himself out of the running last night, for various reasons, it all worked out fine, as we were ready to go with the new guy.  When it’s confirmed, I’ll reveal who it is, but it’s someone who does a LOT of work on TV and in film and has been on several long-running TV shows, including one right now.  So, we’re very happy about it but I just want to let him know it’s a go before revealing who it is publicly.  These things really do have a way of working themselves out for the best.

I did a lot of work at the piano and with the lyricist on the phone, trying to focus the intention of a lyric, and I always enjoy that back and forth.  I finally got a little test from the DVD authoring folks – there’s some new proprietary software that they wanted to test on the transfer.  I was quite pleased with what I saw – while it doesn’t fix the blurriness of the image, what it does do is smooths it out and pretty much totally removes the video scan lines from the three-quarter-inch tape source.  And their test was in 16×9 widescreen, which made it even more impressive, so I gave the okay to do it and now we will have a 16×9 transfer of the director’s cut, instead of the 4×3 letterbox version.  All I can say is, it’s a good thing we raised all that money, because of all the extras, especially the three commentaries and this new software thing, the price has gone up substantially.

Then I shaved and showered and got ready to go.  I moseyed on over to the mail place and picked up a couple of packages, then headed over to Doug Haverty’s.  Well, attempted to head over.  They were doing work on the street I was on and traffic was backed up almost a quarter of a mile and was not moving at all.  So, I turned around and took another street south.  Well, that was no good because there’s a school there and it had just let out, and all the entitled parents who think they can just park in the middle of the street to pick up their kids, caused a huge logjam there.  The ten-minute drive took twenty-five minutes.

Then we left for La Mirada.  That twenty-five-minute drive was mostly a nightmare and took a little over ninety-five minutes.  We parked at the theater, and then walked over to the nearby iHop, where we managed to kill ninety minutes.  I had a bacon cheeseburger that was pretty good, and for a side I had two pancakes – they are just as horrid as I remembered from many years ago.  But I ate most of them, treating it like dessert.

Then we picked up the tickets.  We still had thirty minutes until they opened the theater, so we took a nice walk around the surrounding mall, looking at the stores and chatting.  Then we went in, got our seats, and saw a musical comedy, a show that’s been kicking around for a decade, that had its first production in 2011 and pretty much nothing after that until last year – La Mirada had a show fall out so they simply bought the production from last year, lock, stock, and barrel, including some of its cast.  The show is called Grumpy Old Men, The Musical.  And suddenly, according to its composer’s bio, it’s Broadway bound.  I don’t think so and why people feel it necessary to say this about any production done anywhere is something I will never understand.  I don’t need to really say to much about the show itself, as these kind of machines, and they ARE machines, these adaptations of movies, are all of a similar stripe and simply don’t interest me much.

But the cast was very good and fun and included several folks I know, so the most fun part of the evening was seeing and chatting with them afterwards – Leslie Stevens (she was in my production of Inside Out – a terrific actress), Hal Linden (what a genuine treasure and warm person he is – eighty-eight, up there getting his laughs – and couldn’t have been more charming to chat with after.  And actor Greg North – we had a nice chat, too.  The ride home took exactly twenty-five minutes.

Today, I can sleep in, I’ll do some work at the piano and on the computer, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, I’ll eat something light, and then I really need to relax – listen to music, maybe watch something, and actually I have to start preparing two new releases.

Tomorrow, I believe I have a lunch with David Wechter, Saturday I’m attending some kind of jazz music gala at the Ricardo Montalban Theater, and Sunday there’s a partay for the outgoing artistic directors of the Group Rep.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, sleep in, work at the piano and computer, hopefully pick up packages, eat, and relax.  Today’s topic of discussion: Of all this endless parade of eighties and nineties movies into musicals, which do you think work best?  Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy that the notes are not going up too late so that the time/space continuum can continuum on its merry way.

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