Well, dear readers, the malaise, which I truly believe stems from getting ten days of five hours of sleep or less, comes and goes as it pleases, which certainly isn’t very sporting. I only got seven hours of sleep yesterday but got another ninety minutes after being up for a couple of hours. And I felt pretty okay, just a little sinus headache, which I believe stems from allergies. I continue to take all my preventatives. But yesterday’s new wrinkle came on about three-thirty, when I started to have vocal issues, like beginning to lose my voice, which I can’t really afford to do. I did keep my seven o’clock meeting/meal and was only going to talk quietly as needed, but thankfully the people with whom I was meeting were running late, so I postponed it till possibly Thursday and instead had a nice patty melt and fries, which were really quite good – the Coral Café. Someone asked if maybe I thought I’d gotten Covid but I don’t think so, since I’ve not had any of those symptoms at all. No loss of smell and taste, no aches, nothing like that. So, the plan is that I shut up completely today and tomorrow and I should be better, voice-wise, by then. Then I’ll just take it easy on my voice until we begin shooting on Sunday. And sleep, which is what I really need a lot of. Give me three straight days of nine or ten hours and it will make a world of difference. I think I just wrote the entirety of these here notes in the first paragraph. Well, not quite and quite not.
I am in the middle of a motion picture on the Prime of Amazon, entitled Law Abiding Citizen, one of those “they killed my family and now I get revenge” things, starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. It’s standard issue and a little too hyper-violent for its own good. EDIT: Two -thirds of the way through I began to have the feeling that I’d seen the film before and indeed I had, three years ago. I hated it then and it’s certainly no better now. As mentioned, yesterday I got seven hours of sleep, was up for a couple of hours, then got another ninety minutes. I’ve been watching on YouTube some of the Darrell Brooks trial – the guy who ran down a bunch of people in a Christmas Day parade – it’s absolutely maddening – he’s representing himself and making a circus of the trial. The judge has the patience of a saint and I believe is handling his wacky behavior well so that there can be no mistrial, which is probably what he wants. The victims’ stories are heart wrenching, and there is not a drop of remorse that is evident from this guy. He’s playing the silly sovereign citizen BS, but the judge isn’t having any of that. I think I’ll have to not watch once he starts calling people to the stand, because he’s simply too irritating.
I didn’t eat all day but did do some work on the computer. I believe all locations are locked up save for the club where we have to shoot one song. Hopefully, we’ll know about that today. Episode nine is fairly easy to shoot, but episode ten, the season finale, has a lot of moving parts and is probably five minutes longer than the other episodes, as there are five songs in it. I’m probably gonna trim the dialogue on the set but we’ll see how it plays. Then it was off to the meeting that never happened, then I stopped at Rite-Aid and got some Mucinex-D because a lot of my issue is phlegm and Mucinex-D breaks up the phlegm. I got more Ricola along with some sour patch kids gummy things. I came home and ate a few of the gummy things and before going to bed, I’ll take a Mucinex-D.
We had two celebrity deaths yesterday, one completely overshadowing the other. The overshadowing death was, of course, the great Angela Lansbury, who not only lived to 96, she worked right up until the end – an amazing life and career. I became a fan in 1956 with The Court Jester, loved her in The Manchurian Candidate, and then finally saw her onstage in Gypsy, opening night at the Shubert Theatre here in LA. Then I saw her twice in Sweeney Todd, once on Broadway and once here and then in the 2012 revival of The Best Man and finally on Broadway in Blithe Spirit. She was one-of-a-kind.
The other death was Michael Callan. He created the role of Riff in West Side Story, then had a really good film and TV career, appearing in The Interns and Cat Ballou and one of the Gidget movies and quite a few others, he had a TV series that didn’t last long, and then he just kind of faded away. Last I saw him was in a play in Santa Monica. He was 86. I used to see him at the Ray Courts signing shows and he seemed like a very nice sort.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’m hoping I’ll continue to feel better, I’ll hopefully find out about the club location, prep for the shoot, and keep my mouth shut all day and night. At some point, I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow, I’ll keep my mouth shut and then we may have the rescheduled meeting as long as my voice is pretty much back to normal. Friday and Saturday I’ll rest up but prep, and then Sunday we shoot for a couple of hours in a recording studio in NoHo.
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, do whatever needs doing, hopefully feel better, hopefully find out about the club location, prep, keep my trap shut all day and night, and then watch, listen, and relax. 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, wondering why in tarnation I used the word stems so much.