Well, dear readers, Friday I felt a bit better and yesterday I didn’t. I still think I simply need more sleep, but I also think I’m just not processing food very well right now. I even had some matzo ball soup yesterday but also had a few onion rings and the latter seems to have done my tummy in a bit. It’s all very tiresome and I need it to be done because there’s a ton of work to be done this week and I have to be operating on all cylinders, although I don’t know how the cylinders will feel about being operated on by an old Jew. Whilst I write these complaining notes, playing is Stanley Myers atmospheric music from Night of the Following Day – someone on the Tube of You just took about fourteen minutes of music sans dialogue but with sound effects and put it up and I grabbed it while the grabbing was good. I did watch two motion pictures on the Flix of Net and they were both perfect examples of just how bad most movies are these days, especially on Netflix. The first was entitled Inheritance and starred Lily Collins. The plot is so ridiculous, the characters so poorly written that even fine actors come off looking like first semester high school acting students – sadly, it’s especially true of Lily Collins, who’s a very fine actor but who is indescribably bad in this thing. Of course, when the writing is this bad it’s easy to blame that, but then you also have to blame the inept director, whose second film this is – since his first film was a bomb it’s amazing he got to make a second film. The film opens with our young heroine, who looks like she’s about nineteen, jogging. Perhaps its time to retire that cliché – I can’t even count the movies that open with the heroine jogging. Then we’re told that this teen-looking young lady is the DA in New York. Well, no. Of course, her wealthy family has – wait for it – dark secrets, one of which she finds out when her pappy dies. He leaves twenty million to her brother and one million to her. Oh, and a set of keys only she is to use. The keys open an underground chamber where pappy has a man chained up, who’s been chained up for the past thirty years. Yes, this is the plot. The way Ms. Collins has to behave is so ridiculous and even Meryl Streep couldn’t do anything to make it work. Of course, THINGS AREN’T WHAT THEY SEEM TO BE and about thirty minutes in even a three-year-old will know what the BIG REVEAL is going to be. They don’t come much worse. Oh, and the score, dear Lord, the score – almost two hours – yes, two HOURS of droning music, which contains no more than three or four notes.
Then I watched something called Lou, because it sounded like it might be fun – kind of a Taken with a woman in the Liam Neeson role. And it would have been fun if that’s what it had actually been. But noooo – this is ART. So, we have to have ANGST and DARK SECRETS and so there’s no fun to be had. Allison Janney stars and she’s VERY serious. Surprisingly, it’s produced by J.J. Abrams – one knows this before his credit appears because the entire first scene is repeated at around the ten-minute mark, a device he thinks is still somehow fresh. It isn’t. In the end, it’s pointless drivel. I’m not sure either film actually made it to a theater.
Yesterday was a day in which I didn’t feel so wonderful. I as up at eight after seven-and-a-half hours of sleep and out of the house by nine. I met Marshall Harvey at Tallyrand in Burbank, and we had a nice breakfast there. I had bacon and eggs and ate one-and-a-half of the three pancakes that came with it – pretty good. After that, I stopped at the mail place and picked up exactly nothing, then came home just as she of the Evil Eye was leaving. I did a few things on the computer, but I was just so out of it that I sat on my couch like so much fish and watched the first of the two movies. Then I had the chicken soup and onion rings, watched the second movie, and tried to watch a third but couldn’t settle on anything. I must have gone through fifty movies on Tubi – nothing. I did doze off for about twenty minutes. I also dozed off on the bed for another thirty minutes. And, of course, was popping Pepcids like crazy. Then it was time to write these here notes.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, and I’m having a complete ME day – no work, no nothing, just relaxing and trying to get back to my normal not so normal self. I’ll eat something mild, I’m sure I’ll find something to watch, but mostly I’m relaxing.
Tomorrow will be back to work, locking our shooting schedule and locations, casting three roles, arranging for extras for the club scene we do here, as well as some meetings and meals and dealing with, you know, stuff.
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 complete ME day, eat, and then watch, listen, and yes, 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, where I’ll continue trying to operate on all cylinders.