Well, dear readers, our stumble-through was very good – just a few lyric fumfers, which is normal for the stumble-throughs, but everyone did really well and the show order seemed to work fine. It was weird doing the stumble-through on a Friday so I kept thinking it was a Saturday and now my brain is confused but then again my brain and confusion are frequent dance partners in the tango of life. That was a deep metaphor, wasn’t it? I think that may have been the deepest metaphor on all the Internet today, a Saturday – oops, sorry, Friday. Anyway, it was fun and now it’s on to the show. Otherwise, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to one of my musical heroes, Mr. Toots Thielmans, and one of my favorite albums of his, entitled Bluesette, a song he happens to have written and a classic to boot. The album has stunning orchestrations by Rogier van Otterloo, very much in the Claus Ogerman vein. I’ve listened to this album hundreds of times and it always makes me happy. Rogier van Otterloo was also a terrific composer, composing great scores for Paul Verhoeven’s Dutch films. He sadly passed away at forty-six. I haven’t found this streaming yet, but if I do, I’ll link to it. I did manage to watch two motion pictures last night whilst relaxing and resting my voice. The first was a TV movie, one of those mystery things by Levinson and Link, the creators of Columbo. This one was called Death by Natural Causes and starred Hal Holbrook, Katherine Ross, Barry Bostwick, and Richard Anderson. It was pretty typical and predictable in certain ways, but fun and the actors were all good. Shot in LA by a Brit director, Robert Day, who I worked with when I did the premiere episode of Lucas Tanner. Nice guy, but some Brits captured LA well and some didn’t, and Day is in the latter category. I like to know where I am and that wasn’t easy in this one, save for one shot where Bostwick, playing an actor, is rehearsing a play in a theater that looked vaguely familiar to me. Then they go outside – the first fun thing is the play is called Prescription Murder, which of course was the Levinson and Link introduction to Columbo. And the theater? The Morgan in Santa Monica on Pico, where I did two back-to-back shows in 1974. Anyway, it was fun. Then I watched a movie I’ve managed to avoid forever – RoboCop, starring Peter Weller, Ronny Cox, and Nancy Allen, directed by the aforementioned Paul Verhoeven. It’s so over the top violent, which of course wasn’t necessary but that’s Mr. Verhoeven – over the top in everything he does. It’s fun once it gets going, it’s “satire” is lame, however, but it has its amusing moments and Weller is very good in it. All in all, I didn’t hate it and even enjoyed it. I started RoboCop 2 but that looks a bit lame – we’ll see. And don’t we love any album that includes the song from The Oscar, Maybe September? We do. Percy Faith, baby. And Toots and Rogier doing it up proud.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll rest my voice and relax, finesse the commentary and print that out, then I’ll get ready and beautified. I’ll pick up some kind of cake and then I’ll mosey on over to the club, which is only about ten minutes from here, and we’ll do our sound check, then doors open at six-thirty and we do the show at seven-thirty. I will, of course, have a full report and I’m sure that some of us will grab a bite afterwards.
Tomorrow, I have a lunch with an out-of-town fellow, then we’ll have our Tony Awards partay here. I don’t know if I’ll be able to see it or not on any of the Firestick things I have – hope so. It will be interesting to see how everything is handled, given the WGA strike. Monday morning I go to storage to find the box that the helper can’t locate, then I think we begin rehearsals that night for the workshop, but that may be Tuesday – have to check the schedule. The rest of the week is all rehearsals in the evenings, but Sami stuff in the daytime, and trying to reach as many TV Academy voters as I can.
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, I must rest my voice and relax, get ready, pick up a cake, have a sound check, do a show, and go eat. Today’s topic of discussion: What were your favorite mystery TV shows of the classic era – from the 1950s through the 1970s and beyond? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have had a deep metaphor in paragraph one of these here notes.