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December 27, 2019:

NOTES, ACTUALLY

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, perhaps it is time for me to share some actual photographs from The Man Who Came to Dinner, along with an actual review quote sheet, so you can actually have some idea of what we’re actually doing, actually.  The question is, how many times can I use the words actual and actually?  Actually, a lot, and that’s the actual truth, actually.  So, here’s the actual review quote sheet.

Aren’t those actually good quotes?  And now, some actual photographs from our show, featuring our actual cast.

Weren’t those lovely actual photographs?  May I add that I do not understand Russian?  Well, that was a non-sequitur, wasn’t it, but not from where I sit (on my new barstool).  You see, whilst I am writing these here notes, I am listening to some nice music by a Russian composer named Andrei Golovin, who is actually younger than I, but only by three years.  And one of the pieces that was playing as I was typing was a vocal sung in Russian and since I do not understand Russian, I had no idea what the HELL the person was singing about.  For all I know, they could have been singing about eating herring in the winter in Minsk or Pinsk or even New Jersey.  What the HELL am I talking about?

Yesterday was a late-start kind of day. I didn’t fall asleep until around three-thirty, was up at five with an upset tummy again, went back to bed around six and slept until one-fifteen.  So, I do believe I got a bit over eight hours of sleep.  I’ve been around a lot of sick people this week and I felt so tired and lethargic that I began to worry and so started taking all my preventatives – I’ve felt that way all day and evening so I’m trying to be proactive, which is better than being antiactive.  Once up, I answered e-mails, went to the mail place and picked up a couple of SAG screeners, which were unfortunately repeats of stuff I’d already gotten from the DGA, one little package, and then I came right home.  I did some work on the computer and at the piano, and then I sat on my couch like so much fish.

Yesterday, I finished watching a motion picture entitled Booksmart.  It’s another smart-aleck picture in which characters spout dialogue that sounds like a bunch of young screenwriters writing dialogue of today and thinking it’s terribly funny when it’s merely terrible.  It’s like every other teen graduating high school movie, just more current to 2019.  It will seem very quaint twenty years from now.  I don’t think this was anything but a critics’ darling.  It’s competently directed by actress Olivia Wilde, and the two leads are okay, but it’s just so predictable at every step – from the two best friends having a fight because the screenwriters need them to, to the obligatory barfing on your friend, to one of them being gay, to clichés rather than characters.  And then, after all that, trying to make you feel something for the two leads.  In other words, I didn’t really care for it much.

Then I had to go read two actors.  They were both very good – one wasn’t really right for the role they were reading for, and the other was a new member of the Group Rep and I thought she had the right look for the role and I liked her reading very much.  Then we had our put-in for this weekend’s Professor Metz – critic Steven Stanley.  He’ll be fun in the part – we ran his scene twice by itself and we gave him the blocking and bits – it’s really just enter, and then there’s one small cross, a cross back, and an exit – so all very simple. Then they began running act one scene one for him, and I took my leave.  The plan was to run that scene, and then do a speed-through of the rest.

I came right back home, took some more preventatives, ate the last of the tuna pasta salad, said the word actually a few times, then sat on my couch like so much fish to watch another DGA screener, this one entitled The Laundromat, about The Panama Papers scandal of a few years ago.  Well, I found it a complete bust because of the approach, which was strictly from The Big Short territory, which I loathe.  What could have been a good thriller or expose film is, instead, a black comedy, smarmy, affected, full of itself, winking, and it just doesn’t work at all.  Meryl Streep and the rest of the cast is fine, and I have to say the one “gotcha” moment in the film really was a “gotcha” moment, so be sure not to read the reviews because everyone I looked at after I finished, gave it away.  And yes, there’s the obligatory vomit scene.  So, can’t recommend this one in any way, shape, or form.

After that, I had some cherry loaf and caramels, and listened to music.

Today, I’ll sleep in, hopefully pick up some packages, and then it’s an early dinner with Sami and her mom, a shared birthday dinner – mine and mom’s.  After that, we’ll all mosey on over to the theater to see the show.

Tomorrow, I can sleep in again, and then I’m doing some book prep work and nothing else.  I’ll do the pre-show announcement for the show but am not sure I’m staying.  We shall see.  Sunday, we may have to read some folks, and then we do our matinee, which is Barry’s last show as Banjo. Then next week we’ll have our Annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve Bash right here at haineshisway.com, where we’ll welcome in the New Year, 2020, and I’ll begin my twentieth book the next morning.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, sleep in, hopefully pick up some packages, have an early dinner, see our show, and then relax.  Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player and your DVD/Blu and Ray player?  I’ll start – CD, numerous things.  DVD, screeners.  Blu-ray, Days of Wine and Roses.  Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall dream of the words actual and actually, having titled these here notes, Notes, Actually.

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