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January 23, 2023:

THE FOLLY OF TODAY

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, rant ahead, so get ready because it’s another edition of The Folly of Today. We now live in a world where young people have no history of anything, we live in a world where you cannot keep up with which words are usable and which words must be sent to the cornfield, if you get my meaning and I know you do because people who frequent haineshisway.com have brains in their heads. Now, a little Facebook history. When I get into any kind of set-to with some wrongheaded “person” on Facebook, where they’re behaving or posting stupidly or being ridiculous, my standard ultimate response after we’ve gone as fer as we can go is always, “One more peep out of you and I send you to the cornfield immediately,” meaning, one more response and I block you on Facebook. More history, just for history’s sake: Sending someone to the cornfield is a clear reference to one of The Twilight Zone’s most famous episodes, in which Billy Mumy, when he’s annoyed by anyone or anything, sends them or it to the cornfield, where they or it are never heard from again. So, that’s that. Yesterday, there was an announcement that Kelli O’Hara and Brian D’Arcy James will be doing a new musical based on Days of Wine and Roses. The reaction to this news was pretty much evenly split with those who said it will be brilliant and they already love it because of mostly Kelli O’Hara and Brian, too. And those who thought it a rather odd notion to make a musical out of a teleplay and film that basically has three characters – Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, and Charles Bickford, in the film – and is a depressing story with a not happy ending. But when you know that the composer/lyricist is Adam Guettell, well, that’s right up his creative alley, that kind of material. I’m not a huge fan of his so I have no interest in this one way or the other, I just think it’s an odd idea.

So, one person in this thread, a young man, says Kelli O’Hara would make a great Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, because she’d sing it better than Annaleigh Ashford, who’ll be playing it with Josh Groban. Now, whatever one thinks of Kelli O’Hara, the notion of her playing Mrs. Lovett is sort of, well, outre. Several people pointed this out to the young man but he obnoxiously would not be dissuaded. I joined in as someone who thought it was a rather outre suggestion and he kind of went after me (and others) about it. I kept asking if he’d ever seen Sweeney Todd, which he ultimately answered after the third time I’d asked but his response didn’t show up because Facebook’s default settings for posts in those kinds of threads (BroadwayWorld, Playbill, etc.) is Most Relevant. If you don’t click on All Posts, you don’t see half the responses in a thread. He began with the usual young people BS of “old man” and “boomer” (a comment that only an immature young person would make), when all I and others were trying to enlighten him on was the fact that Mrs. Lovett is not a role that needs a lyric soprano, it’s a role that was written for an actress with character comic chops and who can perform the songs, i.e. Angela Lansbury. He brought up Patti LuPone and I responded that if he lumps Patti LuPone in the same boat as Kelli O’Hara that he should just stop. But he couldn’t stop and he kept with the offensive stuff. And so, seeing that there was nowhere to go with this young person, I posted “One more peep out of you and I send you to the cornfield.” I wanted him to see that before I blocked him, but then forgot about it because I was, you know, finishing a book.

This morning, he posts on my page in the new book thread that I’m a racist and I told him to go work in the fields. Yes, exactly, I kid you not. Somehow, this delusional young man was equating send you to the cornfield with go work in the fields. Scratch your collective heads, dear readers, because that is what I did, before removing his post and blocking him. I mean, this is the world in which we live. Then I’m looking at notifications on my phone and he’s messaged me on Instagram under two different accounts, saying the same thing. So, I, being the nice sort that I am, set him straight about what I did and did NOT post, what the line I did post meant, sent him to Google so he could look up both The Twilight Zone and It’s a Good Life and educate himself. I then blocked both those accounts. Fine. Tonight, he creates another account so he can PM me on Facebook and continues his nonsense and throws out this sop – “Even if you didn’t mean it that way” followed in parens with (“You did”), and more BS. I wrote a response, didn’t send, blocked that account, but decided I wanted a record of the conversation, so I unblocked, sent, and then tried to block but Facebook, being the bastion of stupidity that it is, says once you block and unblock you then can’t block again for forty-eight hours. But I warned him in my response that if he made one more message or post I would report all his accounts to both Facebook and Instgram (the fact is, I’d already reported him to Instagram because they don’t take kindly to harassment and stalking). Hopefully, he’ll stop but if he doesn’t, I’ll just keep removing his stuff until I can block him again. And that, dear readers, is The Folly of Today.

Yesterday was fine, I suppose. I got about seven hours of sleep, got up, answered e-mails, dealt with the cornfield person, then began futzing and finessing and because there were more pages than usual, that took about 105-minutes. I did a lot of smoothing out, doing a few additions, making a few subtractions, and then trying to get the final page a bit more to my liking. I think I did, at least it read better to me. I did a PDF of all the new stuff Muse Margaret hasn’t seen and sent that. Then I called to make sure she knew it was there, but they were out. She called me around five-thirty and said she got the message and the pages, and that she’d read them tomorrow meaning today.

I’d done all her tiny suggested changes and/or additions – it only involved six things and I did them all in about fifteen minutes because they were just word things, or being a bit more descriptive about this or that, so I read her all those over the phone and she really liked all of them, so that was good.

Prior to the phone call, I’d already ordered and eaten my small pepperoni pizza and that was good. Then I sat on my couch like so much fish and began watching a 2020 movie entitled Tenet, which I’d never seen, one of those Christopher Nolan extravaganzas that I’m not too fond of and after about forty-five minutes of Tenet and not being able to understand much of the mumbling by the actors, I’m not sure I want to finish it. Instead, I watched the overseas Blu and Ray of The Third Secret, a movie I’m fond of that I saw back in the day. I’ve written about it before so shan’t say much other than Pamela Franklin is wonderful in it, Stephen Boyd was a very odd actor, and Jack Hawkins is terrific in his short scene. There are four people, patients, who might have murdered their analyst, whose death was ruled a suicide, but the analyst’s young daughter doesn’t believe he would have killed himself, nor does anyone who knew him. Near the end of the movie, the guily party accidentally says to Stephen Boyd there were five patients and then the guilty party says, “I said four,” but it’s too late and the truth is soon discovered. The fun thing about this is that originally there were five people, patients, who might have done the deed but the fifth patient was cut out of the film to trim it down, the fifth patient being Patricia Neal, who’d just won an Oscar for Hud so, probably not the wisest removal. Of course, we’ve never seen that footage so it may well have killed the pace of the film. So, if you watch the movie carefully, whenever anyone is saying “four” patients, their mouth is saying “five.”  And at the end, when the guilty party screws up and says “five” her mouth is saying “six.” Fun stuff.

After that, I made some white rice with a bit of butter on it and that was a fine evening snack.

Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll do some catching up, do some organizing, hopefully get the Muse Margaret call and pray that she likes the 80-something pages she got, and then I can watch, listen, and relax.

The rest of the week is having a celebratory book finishing dinner somewhere fun, meeting up with the author of the play whose workshop production I’ll be directing, just working with him on the structure a bit and making sure everything is working the way he intends it to work, praying for a major miracle, and at some point seeing the first cut of episode nine and hopefully getting some green screen stuff back from the fellow who’s doing those backgrounds.

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, do some catching up, do some organizing, hopefully get the Muse Margaret call, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: Easy one – what do you think of The Folly of Today – examples, stuff you’ve had to deal with personally, woke, people who not only misinterpret but lie about what you said, all that stuff. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, hoping that The Folly of Today will soon go the way of the dodo bird.

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