Well, dear readers, I have breaking bombshell news for you – it is December. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, it is December, the last month of 2024. Can you believe it? In any case, it is my fervent hope and prayer that December will be a month filled with health, wealth, happiness, creativity, and all things bright and beautiful. And a couple of modern major miracles would be so helpful to make this birthday and holiday month really special. Make it so, please. As I write these here first of December notes, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to Bernard Herrmann’s beautiful clarinet concerto, which sounds very much like his beautiful film music. And can we not all use all the beauty we can get in our lives, for ‘twas beauty that killed the metaphorical beast and who needs a metaphorical beast in their life when one should only have beauty? These are profound musings by an old Jew who, in one week, will be turning a new age – think of it as lucky sevens – but an old Jew who’s about as profound as a piece of pound cake. Speaking of pound cake, I’m not eating any right now and I don’t care who knows it. But before we move on to December, let’s just wrap up November, which was a somewhat contentious month in certain ways and a good month in others. However, the final day of November was nothing to write home about, and yet I wrote home about it. Home didn’t respond. I got three hours of sleep, got up at seven, tried to go back to bed on three separate occasions but couldn’t fall asleep. So, I just answered e-mails and did stuff on the computer until I ordered some food at eleven-thirty. A patty melt (Norm’s was having a 75th anniversary thing, so the patty melt was only ten bucks and came with a few onion rings and a tiny salad) – it arrived around twelve-fifteen, and I must say it was not too good – not horrible – but not too good. I just don’t think things like patty melts travel well, unless they’re coming from super close. The onion rings were few and were just okay. Then I did a few more things around the house but just felt out of it due to lack of sleep. At three, I went to the mail place and thankfully, there were not one, not two, but three important envelopes. The two pension things and a surprise residual from the old Penn and Teller show that’ll buy a couple of nice dinners. I stopped at the nearby Gelson’s to get a salad from the salad bar for the low-calorie evening thing. I did, but they were out of things I always put in the salad – eggs, green peppers, and a few other items. They really are the worst Gelson’s and I must stop going there and only go to the one across the street from the mail place. I came home and just puttered about the home environment, then plopped on the bed and slept for two hours.
Then I found a movie to watch, a really, really, really low-budget film noir thing I’d never heard of because it only played the bottom half of a double bill in 1956, the top feature being The Lieutenant Wore Skirts. Anyway, this thing, called Please Murder Me, is in the public domain, so all copies are really awful – I began watching on Tubi but I found a slightly better version on the Tube of You and watched that. The stars are Raymond Burr and Angela Lansbury, along with some excellent character people like Denver Pyle, John Dehner, along with young Lamont Johnson, who’d give up acting and go into directing – lots of movies, including Lipstick, One on One, The Groundstar Conspiracy, Somebody Killed Her Husband, classic TV movies, including That Certain Summer, My Sweet Charlie, The Execution of Private Slovak, and series like The Name of the Game, The Twilight Zone, The Defenders – well, you get the idea. The movie was shot across the street from Paramount at California Studio, which would become Producer’s Studio, where we shot The First Nudie Musical, and then Raleigh. The most interesting thing about it is that that was the year Raymond Burr auditioned for Perry Mason and in the movie, he plays a defense attorney who gets his client off a murder rap. You can see the seeds. Miss Lansbury looks great (same year as The Court Jester) and plays a conniving, evil woman. Bad script, directed by Peter Godfrey, who doesn’t appear to know how to frame a shot, and yet he directed some very well-known movies – Escape Me Never, The Two Mrs. Carrolls, Christmas in Connecticut, and others. Go know. This was, in fact, his final film, then he did three years of TV and that was it for his career, although he lived until 1970. Anyway, it was short.
After that, I ate my salad, and that was that, began listening to music, and here we are.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll have a proper ME day and prepare the mind for the eye surgeon appointment, I’ll eat something light but fun, then watch, listen, and relax. I have to get to bed right after posting the notes.
Tomorrow, I’ll be up by seven-thirty and on my way by eight. I don’t see any way to avoid the worst freeway in Los Angeles, the 405 so I’m allowing two hours. I have several options about where to get off the freeway, but I think I’ll let the GPS guide me, just in case. The appointment is at 10:15 and should probably last an hour, I’d imagine. Then I’ll come home and do whatever needs doing including banking, I’ll eat, and then at some point I’ll watch, listen, and relax. Then on Tuesday we have our first Kritzerand rehearsal in the afternoon, Wednesday and Thursday there’s lots to do, Friday is our second rehearsal, Saturday is our stumble-through, and then Sunday is our show at two, and then a few folks will go somewhere to celebrate the lucky sevens birthday of someone I like to call – ME.
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, have a proper ME day, prepare for tomorrow morning’s doings, eat, and then watch, listen, and relax. 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, happy that it is December, a month of birthdays and holidays, celebrations, and joy and hopefully some modern major miracles, and it is my fervent hope and prayer that December will be a month filled with health, wealth, happiness, creativity, and all things bright and beautiful.