Well, dear readers, it is very late and I must write these here notes in a hurry because otherwise there will be utter chaos and utter calamity and those kinds of things can lead to Utter McKinley. Do let me know if you get the reference. I used that line in a Kritzerland show once and a few people tittered until I looked at the audience in disbelief and said what Utter McKinely was – and THAT got a huge laugh. In any case, let’s begin with Perry Mason. I finished season one and I have to say I pretty much hated it. I like the lead actor, in fact, most of the actors are fine, but this reimagining is just shameful, at least to me and I have to assume to any fan of Erle Stanley Gardner and the original TV series. This Perry is such a kind of loser through most of season one and then suddenly at the end of episode five, he becomes a lawyer in six minutes. I mean, that’s not good writing, let’s face the fact. It was nice to see Musso and Frank and since it was shot at the beginning of the pandemic, it’s nice they got the business, since they were shut down. But meandering the story over eight hours just doesn’t work. It’s repetitious, actors have to play the same story beats repeatedly, and since we already know the who the only reason to watch is to see how the case will turn out and let’s just say they took the easy way. The Della character is especially irritating as the writers are putting all this “now” stuff on the character circa 1932, plus the ridiculous Lesbian stuff. Why? Because they can? Anyway, episode eight just fizzles to an uninteresting conclusion. The score by Terence Blanchard doesn’t help things at all, the period detail is fine albeit with a lot of phony baloney CGI. The telephone number malarkey is unforgiveable, as it’s not much of a secret that before 1950 telephone numbers had a prefix and FOUR numbers, not five. I also watched the first three episodes of season two and it’s almost worse, especially because Della always seems to do the heavy lifting for Perry, who just comes off as weak – that’s not the character Mr. Gardner wrote. And frankly, Della is even more irritating with her 1932 feminism and Lesbianism, cheating on her sweet girlfriend with another woman. I mean, who writes this stuff? I mean, if you’re stretching something out over eight episodes maybe some characters that are actually likeable would be a good idea. I also find the direction completely annoying, the overdone violence is misplaced and unnecessary, as is the every four seconds us of the F word. I had no idea that HBO didn’t put the entire series on at once, but it seems that nothing past episode three is available to view. I don’t get it.
Yesterday was just plain weird. I got seven hours of sleep, got up, had a telephonic conversation with David Wechter, we finalized a couple of things and then he proofed the project and then sent it and an email to the people who are interested. I had a Philly cheese from Fat Sal’s, again 40% off, but I’m kind of over their stuff right now. Later, I got some strawberry cheesecake for dessert, but that’s all I ate all day, so I thing I didn’t overdo anything, although I’m hungry right now. I shan’t be getting anything, never fear.
Around two, I got word that Amazon had rejected episode one of our show (nothing about the subsequent episodes, which we now assume are okay with them) – the reason? The episode contains a faux commercial for a faux product that then becomes a running gag for the entire series. But in this faux commercial we insert text that has a faux URL address and this they don’t allow. Sami also speaks the address in the faux commercial. I guess it didn’t occur to anyone that its FAKE, not real, fiction. And you can’t have a discussion about it, it takes them forever to return messages and I was pretty sure they wouldn’t bend because you’re dealing with people who simply go by their rule books even if they’re completely misunderstanding what is on screen. Rather than do that, I spent an hour trying to figure out how to salvage it and remove the offending text and spoken URL. The first thought was to just remove the text URL and have Sami loop a replacement line. But after an hour of trying to figure out a line that would fit in her lips and not seem like a bad foreign movie dub, I came up with a perfect solution. To replace the text logo with the name of the faux product but a large version, which would pop on and replace Sami for the one line where she speaks the URL – then I wrote a simple replacement line, she recorded it, she pops back on screen a second later to deliver the final line of the faux commercial. Everyone made it happen very fast, so that was good. I sent it to Marshall, he cut it in and sent it back to me, I approved it, and it’s now in the episode and he’ll bring me on a thumb drive the new hi-rez version of that episode and I’ll upload it to Amazon right from here. We’ll include a note saying that the original version’s URL and all was not real and this was all unnecessary but that we went to great expense to simply change it so they could approve it right away and then hopefully tell us we’re good to go.
I did have to cancel the cabaret act I was going to see because I had to be here for all the changing we had to do, which lasted from five to eight-thirty, and I approved it at nine-thirty. See what I mean about a weird day? And all I want now is another sandwich, but I shall be strong, oh, yes, I shall be strong.
Today, I’ll be up by ten and the Spectrum phone people are coming to Spectrum up the landline and that will happen between eleven and twelve. Then I’ll call ATT and make sure that they know all the accounts are closed and that I’ll expect a refund for whatever time I’m not having their service. I’ll want all that in writing in an email and I’ll insist they disable any auto pay functions that are still on. I am already happier, knowing I’ll be saving over 1K a year. Marshall will come by at two-thirty, I’ll get the new version of episode one on the computer and then uploaded to Amazon and the adjusted closed captions will be uploaded at the same time and we’ll immediately re-submit, along with our note. I’ll see if Marshall wants to go have a bite to eat – if not, I’ll go out and bring something back and I’ll ascertain whether the green envelope has shown up.
Tomorrow will be more book and Sami stuff, and I’m sure the weekend will be more of that, too.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by ten, have a Spectrum visit, have a Marshall visit, upload the revised episode one and then hope we get the good to go notice sooner than later, hope for a humungous major miracle, eat, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What other “new” series have you enjoyed that you think I might enjoy? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, hoping for the hopeful many things we heed to happen will happen in a timely manner.