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March 25, 2020:

STIR CRAZY

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, I am starting to get a tiny bit stir crazy.  For example, yesterday I spent many hours stirring things – anything I could find, actually – I stirred tuna pasta salad, I stirred water, I stirred Diet Coke, I stirred the pot (not the marijuana cigarettes, the actual pot), I was stirring, I stirred an English muffin and let me tell you that is not easy, and after all that stirring you’d have to surmise I’m crazy.

Yesterday, I got too much sleep and I’m not finding that helpful at all – in fact, I’d rather get seven hours rather than ten.  But yesterday, it was nine and a half hours of sleep. Once up, it was the usual things – answering e-mails, nosing around the Internet, and reading more Woody Allen.  At around two I ate two helpings of the tuna pasta salad, which was most excellent.

Then I moseyed on over to the mail place and picked up a tiny package and no mail.  It’s shockingly busy there and I do not understand it, although I’d say every single person in there is returning Amazon packages.  But the owner was there, saw me, and got me my package, which is what should always happen, since none of the rubes returning their Amazon crap actually pay for a box there.  I’ve been with this UPS Store from when they were on Ventura Blvd.  That’s since around 2002.  The ownership has changed hands a couple of times, but that’s eighteen years a loyal customer and we should NEVER have to wait to get our packages.

I came back home and read more Woody, then at some point I sat on my couch like so much fish, first trying to watch The Agony and the Ecstasy – hadn’t looked at the Blu-ray before and only saw it once, back in 2005 when the DVD came out.  I enjoyed it back then, but after thirty minutes it was a little too much agony and not enough ecstasy, so I turned it off.  Then I watched about thirty minutes of Grand Prix, another Blu-ray I never watched.  I saw it when it came out – maybe five or six times at the Cinerama Dome, and really liked it.  But seeing it these many years later, it’s got a really weak script, cardboard characters, and a whole lot o’ melodrama.  The actual racing stuff is still very exciting and director John Frankenheimer handles that all very well.  The main title sequence by Saul Bass is also excellent. James Garner and Brian Bedford come off best.  The Maurice Jarre score is typical of his 1960s stuff and certainly loud.  Not sure if I’ll finish it.  I got antsy and shut it off, had one more helping of tuna pasta salad (that’s half the batch), had an English muffin with it, then later, reading more Woody (now over halfway through) I had some pretzels and some crackers and a handful of Milk Duds.  And then, somehow it was time to write these here notes.  Oh, and of course, throughout the day I stirred like crazy.

Today, I will hopefully be up by eleven at the latest (will set the alarm), and I’m sure it will be more of the same, although I do have to start writing my 1500-word entry for this book on musicals, and that will require some research.  That will be a nice diversion.  I’ll probably finish the Woody book, I’ll call the mail place, rather than go there, although the motor car had difficulty starting yesterday, so I do have to go out and at least take a short drive.  I’ll eat, listen to music, watch something, write, and read.

The rest of the week is all that and not more, I do need a damn miracle right about now – not a huge one, but a miracle nonetheless – and figuring out food after today’s tuna pasta salad, will be fun, I suppose.  One gathers fun wherever one can find it.  I am shaving every few days even though it would be so easy to grow a beard.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up no later than eleven, will start researching and writing, eat, finish the Woody book, call the mail place, and then perhaps watch something and, of course, listen to music, which is always an elixir of the highest order.  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, happy to have gone on a crazy stirring binge, which I recommend to one and all as well as all and one.

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