Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, trying to have a voice and resting for that reason, and listening to Mr. Bela Bartok’s concerto for orchestra, a wonderful piece of music conducted to a T by Antal Dorati in great Mercury Living Presence stereophonic sound. I managed to watch no motion pictures last night – I turned one on, an Ozu film called Good Morning, but for me it was good night and I fell asleep instantly for about forty minutes. But let’s begin at the beginning, a very good place to start.
Yesterday was fine. I got just about eight hours of sleep that would have been nine if I hadn’t been up for an hour at five-thirty. Once up, I shaved and showered and got ready for the podcast thing. Then that happened and it was fun but lasted longer than I thought it would. Anson Williams was a no-show, so there were four of us and everyone had nice stories and we were told Cindy’s kids were watching.
After that was done, I went to Gelson’s and got stuff for tuna sandwiches, a little thing of their good creamy tomato soup from the soup bar and got two twelve-packs of Diet Coke. I came back home and had the soup, then made the two sandwiches on onion rolls and ate those all up – very good. Then I had a couple of telephonic conversations then had to stop talking and rest my voice and the only other talking I did was a brief telephonic conversation just ten minutes ago.
But the rest of the day and then most of the evening was spent continuing to finesse the new book. Just tiny things here and there, tossing an awkward sentence or two or transition and I think it’s picking nits but nitpicking of the good kind. And, as always, I’m finding typos we all missed. I’m going VERY slowly, but I did manage another sixty pages so I’m around page 124 now. I did get one blurb back from a one of the two people I asked to blurb it but it was so weird and out there that I can’t really even adjust it so that it makes sense. I think he made an incorrect assumption about the book and so his blurb was about that incorrect assumption and went on and on without ever really saying anything about the book other than I’d written it. I can’t tell you what the blurb was about because it would reveal what the book is, but I have to get someone else to do that one.
I also checked the Kritzerland e-mail account, which I hadn’t checked since Cindy passed away, and there were two really lovely, heartfelt e-mails, one from Rupert Holmes and one from Cindy’s Nudie co-star, Stephen Nathan.
And that was about it for the day and evening, although I did have to order a few things from Rite Aid, like more Pepcid. Oh, and let’s send our patented excellent vibes and xylophones to Grant Geissman, who will be attending the Grammy Awards and hopefully winning one.
Today, I’ll be up by eleven-thirty or thereabouts, I’ll relax and rest my voice whilst continuing through the book, then at four I’ll mosey on over to the theater for a quick sound check, then I’ll come right home and shave and shower and get ready, then I’ll mosey on back to the theater at six. The show starts at seven and think I come on fourth or fifth, not real sure about that. Doug Haverty will be coming with me. Since I won’t really have eaten, I’m hoping we can go grab a bite after the show. Then I’ll come home and continue on the book.
Tomorrow, I have a noon o’clock phone call that could be interesting, and then I’m just doing book stuff the rest of the day and that’s what this week will be, finishing that, hopefully getting the other blurb and finding someone else to do the second blurb, and then at some point seeing the first cut of episode ten, after which we’ll go back to episode one and do our final finessing and lock all ten episodes save for episode nine, which has to wait for three or four days – Sami is coming into town to attend a Bat Mitzvah, and we’re taking her into the studio to re-record the song for episode ten. Tricky, because it has to match exactly the phrasing she did when she did it live, but we’ll get it done. When we shot that scene, here at Vitello’s, it was early in the morning and she wasn’t really warmed up, plus the day before she’d really been through the ringer, doing three songs live and multiple takes.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eleven-thirty or thereabouts, relax and rest my voice and continue my finessing of the book, do a quick sound check, get ready, then attend, sing, and present at the Robby Awards and hopefully have a bite to eat afterwards. 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, hoping the Robby Awards will be fun and not too long.