Well, dear readers, I think we can safely say that yesterday was one of the most disgusting days in the history of this country. I don’t care which side of the fence you’re on – that no longer matters. What matters is that there was incitement to riot, which is illegal. Everyone who is culpable in this needs to be arrested and charged and the fact that the police did nothing to stop it, and even encouraged it by allowing it happen, and the fact that the National Guard was not deployed immediately, well, something has to be done about it and if it were up to me I know exactly what that something would be. You know me – I never talk about this stuff, but yesterday requires me to talk and should require every thinking human with a functioning brain to talk. Shame on all of them. And the senators who aided and abetted it should not be seated. That probably won’t happen, but it should. And yet, in typical fashion, these cretins are now trying to blame it on others, saying they were completely peaceful. Well, brainiacs, if you really want to try that one you ought not to take selfies and photos and be without masks, because everyone who’s in a photo can be identified, and some already have been and you can probably guess what side these people are on. And yet, still on Facebook you have trolls who will not acknowledge anything, who believe every lie they’re fed and it’s not only shocking, at this point it’s pathetic and moronic. I really believe that if these people were told to drink poisoned Kool-Aid, they would do it, just as Jim Jones’s followers did it. And even as I write these here notes, there are STILL a handful of idiot senators objecting to certification as that process plays out in the middle of the night. The good news is, those people will live in infamy, their names will live in infamy, and hopefully they will never EVER be allowed to serve again. I am sorry for the rant, but what I and the world witnessed yesterday can never ever be allowed to happen again. I has spoken and I don’t care who knows it.
Yesterday was yesterday, there is no getting around it. I only got six hours of sleep and then I answered some e-mails and had intended to just see if the certification had happened and then all hell broke loose and who could concentrate on anything after that. I did eventually futz and finesse, doing the usual additions and subtractions and smoothing. I wrote one new page, then went to the mail place. There were few cars on the freeway and no people at all in the mail place because everyone was home watching the horror show play out. I had a couple of packages, one of which was a vocal score for Street Scene, but one of the original ones released way back in the day, rather than the new ones. This one was bound, and I don’t think the seller had a clew how interesting this copy was, and he didn’t even mention the most fun thing about it: The name engraved on the front binding is Joanne Spiller. I looked her up and she was a Broadway gal who appeared in Two on the Aisle, the off-Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera (she was a replacement), and The Gay Life. But the fun part is that it’s signed to her by the conductor Maurice Levine, the conductor of Weill’s Lost in the Stars, Flahooley, and a few other good shows. So, that’s fun to have.
I went to Gelson’s and got a chicken Caesar salad for food, came home, ate it, and then finally got to work on the day’s writing. But it was a slog and slow going. I eventually got eleven pages done and I’m determined to do five more after I post these here notes. I had a nice telephonic conversation with Muse Margaret, so she knows 100 pages are coming to her today at some point. I had to take a break at some point, so I watched this new George Clooney movie, which is just so typical of today’s movies and it’s just like every other movie that takes place in space these days, right down to its ending – and if you don’t know what that ending is going to be in the first fifteen minutes of the film, then you haven’t been going to the movies for the last decade. Mr. Clooney also directed. He’s fine in it and so is everyone else, but it’s such a bad script, and the music by Alexandre Desplat is obviously following a temp track, and at about the eighty-minute mark it just completely jumps the shark – you’ll know the moment – it involves a Neil Diamond song and it’s so ludicrous that it’s actually cringeworthy.
After that, I had a frozen chicken pot pie for the evening thing, I wrote, and then had to get everything ready for the new Kritzerland release. The first release of 2021 is Ben Bagley’s Jerome Kern III. It’s really fun and the songs are, well, Jerome Kern. We were able to add four bonus songs that Ben never managed to get on CD, so that’s fun. Here’s the cover.
I never listened to a single note of music all day, which was also irritating as all get out and I think we all know just how irritating all get out is.
Today, I’ll be up by eleven, I’ll futz and finesse, then I’ll print out the first 100 pages, I’ll have them Xeroxed, and then I’ll get them to Muse Margaret. Then I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, I’ll eat something light, I’ll write new pages, and then at some point I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow is more of the same and the weekend is even more of the same. Then we begin filming on project one.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eleven, futz and finesse, print out pages, Xerox pages, get pages to Muse Margaret, hopefully pick up packages, write new pages, eat something light but amusing, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite plays of the following authors: Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee, and Neil Simon. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, as I entertain the hope that there will, at long last, be some accountability for bad and illegal behavior.