Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to the fourth symphony of Arnold Bax and it’s quite excellent. After this one, it’s the fifth symphony and then I’ve heard ‘em all and I’ll be maxxed and Baxxed out. Prior to that, I watched a docu-series (where do they come up with these stupid names) called American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story. This was an Amazon thing that I watched on my firestick. Hef, as he told me to call him, was an interesting fellow, and my year with him was wonderful and he was always very sweet to me. Well, this thing was in ten – yes TEN – parts of forty-five minutes each. Listen, his life was fascinating and there is a lot of good information from a variety of talking heads and some great archival footage. But this is a ridiculously untalented director who thinks he’s making a movie – apparently, this is his “thing.” So, eighty percent of the show is “reenactments” by actors, and it’s just awful. Lots of nudity from the actors in these reenactments – well, from the women. Those segments are horribly directed and the director loads the first seven episodes with one pop song after another, only stopping from some terrible original music to underscore some attempt to create a “will he get out of this one or not” moment. If someone with talent had gone in and made a three- or four-part documentary, only using narration, the talking heads, and the archival footage, this could have been so much better. But then, Amazon couldn’t have stretched it out to ten episodes. I can’t even imagine what they spent on the reenactment scenes, with all the sets and costumes and period stuff. What a waste of money and time. The only fun thing in all of that junk was that one of the roles was played by Adam Jonas Segaller, who, four years ago, played the lead in my production of Dial ‘M’ for Murder at the Group Rep. He’s done a ton of these reenactment things, all for this production company. Anyway, I stuck it out through all ten episodes. While they did talk about the Playboy Channel and how revolutionary it was, no mention was made of the show I was on or of its co-host and former girlfriend of Hef, Shannon Tweed. I wonder why? Maybe they were on the outs and this WAS co-produced by Playboy Enterprises. Oh, and it’s Halloween. So, I hope you’ll all be dressing up in you clever and scary Halloween costumes and that you’ll give out lots of candy. I, personally, will not be giving out candy this year. We get so few kids here, it’s not worth it and I suspect it will be even less than the ten or fifteen we usually get, due to you-know-what.
Yesterday was an okay day. I was up at eight-thirty and at Hugo’s for breakfast by nine-fifteen. I had a bacon and cheese omelet with some breakfast potatoes. Then I moseyed on over to the Illiad Bookshop – hadn’t been in a couple of years – and it was nice to be surrounded by books. They’ve moved things around – the counter used to be in the front of the store right off the front door, but they’re not using the front door anymore, so they moved the counter off the back door. I was fascinated to see they had four copies of There’s Mel, There’s Woody, and There’s You – two unsigned softcovers and two hardcovers, one of which made me sad – my late hairdresser Teddy’s copy – obviously, someone sold all his stuff. They also had a copy of my short story collection, also signed to Teddy, one copy of Album Produced by, signed to someone named Jenni, and one copy of Benjamin Kritzer. I checked out the plays and musicals – nothing much there – and then I had to get out of there because I can’t mask in a place like that for too long.
I went to the mail place and picked up one important envelope and no packages. I suspect the other important envelope may have been in yesterday’s mail, which I don’t think had been sorted through yet. So, I’ll stop there on my way to rehearsal to see if it’s there. Then I came home.
I caught up on e-mails and stuff, then the singer arrived to pick up her show book (music) so she can get it to the pianist who’s doing her show in Palm Springs. Then I watched a few episodes of the Hef thing, then did a quick Gelson’s run and got a small Caesar (and boy was it small – smaller and smaller) and a muffin top (bran), came home, ate the muffin top, watched more episodes, ate the salad, and the finished the show. After that, I went back to Bax, and the rest you know.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, then I’ll mosey on over to the mail place and then rehearsal. I think we have half of our actors, but I can’t remember if that’s accurate or not. We’ll run stuff a few times, especially transitions, and I’ll stage the little ending thing I’ve come up with (you can’t really do what’s written because it involves props and costumes), and that will be that. Then I’ll figure out what I want to do for food. Of course, I’ll be near Tom’s, where I love the bacon cheeseburger, and Dino’s, where I love the pizza, and the Coral Café, where there are many things I love. We’ll see how I’m feeling. Then I’ll come home and watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow, I’ll be up by ten and I’ll go do my banking and get that out of the way. Then I’ll relax until it’s time to go to the theater. We’ll run transitions and the ending thing, and then at seven-thirty, we do the reading. Tuesday, I have to go to the storage place and while I’m there I will have them fix, once and for all, whatever the issues are with me paying online, because the people I talk to on the phone say it’s something the place has to fix. And then we start rehearsals for the other play. Wednesday evening, I get the booster shot. And then there are some meetings and meals to do. And, of course, Monday begins a new month and it is my fervent hope and prayer that November will be a month filled with health, wealth, happiness, creativity, and all things bright and beautiful.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, go to the mail place, have a rehearsal, eat, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, wishing everyone a happy and safe and scary Halloween.