Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much Friday fish, listening to the soothing strains of a key album of my young years and one of my favorite Easy Listening albums and, as you know, I was a huge fan of Easy Listening albums when I was young and even now. Percy Faith, Kostelanetz, Don Costa, Bill Purcell, Jackie Gleason and many others. But this one was something wholly other – I’d guess I sat in my room in the dark listening to this hundreds of times. I’m surprised there were any grooves left, frankly. I bought the album in the first months of 1960 when I was twelve, simply because I loved the cover and who wouldn’t love this cover?
I’d never heard of Norrie Paramor but I was sure intrigued with “Thirty-three strings and a girl”. Playing the album, it was the sound of it – the spacious monophonic sound, the way the orchestra, the soprano, and the chorus, seemed to be floating on air (once I got my stereophonic record player, I got this in stereo) – and it was this sound that I always tried to achieve on my albums. The song I fell in love with the most was Every Street’s a Boulevard in Old New York, but I loved every track. At the time, I had my only friend from when I was that age (the story is told in great detail in Kritzerland) and I have distinct memories of us walking home from the Stadium Theater after having seen a movie on a Friday or Saturday night, and singing Every Street’s a Boulevard in Old New York at the top of our lungs. I can remember everything – what route we took, what the night air felt like, smelled like, and I even remember walking home and singing this after specifically seeing Bells Are Ringing there on October 22, 1960, a Saturday night (I know I would not have missed The Twilight Zone on Friday night). We saw Bells Are Ringing and didn’t stick around for the second feature, The Angel in Red. Looking at what else was playing around town, I saw an awful lot of movies around that time, including Song Without End at the Stanley Warner Beverly Hills, Spartacus at the Pantages – I hadn’t yet begun going to the theater – that would happen early the following year, but had I been I could have seen Once Upon a Mattress with Dody Goodman and Buster Keaton at the Biltmore, Destry Rides Again with Anne Jeffreys and John Raitt or the famous production of The Threepenny Opera with Lotte Lenya, having a limited engagement at the Music Box Theater on Hollywood Blvd. and La Brea. In smaller theaters, the musical revue Vintage 60 was playing at the Ivar with Fay De Witt, and if you were feeling really adventurous you could drive all the way out to Canoga Park to the Valley Playhouse and see Norman Krasna’s comedy, Who Was that Lady starring Bob Crane and Tom Hatten. It was a time, for sure. Happily, Autumn was released on a two-fer CD along with another Norrie Paramor album in gorgeous stereophonic sound. Listening, I feel like I’m twelve again and all I can tell you about my twelfth year was that the raging hormones were raging.
Before I continue, and I WILL continue, may I just say that it is May 5 and for those with a keen sense of history will know that exactly forty-eight years ago on May 5, which was a Monday in 1975, we began filming The First Nudie Musical. Yep, in two years, we’re coming up on the film’s fiftieth anniversary!. And six years after we began filming Nudie, on Monday, May 5th in 1981, we began filming The Creature Wasn’t Nice. I like the symmetry of it, don’t you? So, Happy Anniversary to both films.
I did watch two motion pictures last evening, the first of which was yet another revenge movie, this one entitled I Am Wrath, starring John Travolta. The plot is like a million others in this genre – his wife is killed in front of him by hoods, but it’s more than it seems and involves corruption in the police all the way up to the mayor. We’ve never seen THAT plot before. Everything is strictly out of Screenwriting 101 – paper thin villains, Travolta in seething mode and of course he’s a former Black Ops guy aided by his friend and partner from the old days (got to have traces of a buddy movie, too), and there’s not a line or scene you can’t predict. Thankfully, sans end credits it’s about eighty-five minutes. Lionsgate seemed to do these films over and over again – spend a ton of money on a name star and cheap out on everything else. You’d think at some point it would sink in that despite the big star all these movies bomb and lose money. The second movie was entitled The Wizard of Lies, the story of the downfall of Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme, the worst in history. This was an HBO movie directed by Barry Levinson, and while I know he has a lot of fans, I’ve never been one of them. Amazingly, I knew little of this story so I found it interesting. Robert De Niro plays Madoff and Michell Pfeiffer his wife. The real people who suffered other than the people Madoff ripped off and who lost all their money, were his two sons, who, despite the fact that they did not know what was going on and were never a part of it, were lambasted and hounded by the media who, of course, don’t care what was true or not, and then they just move on to the next. I found it interesting and now I know what all the brouhaha was about. The actors are all very good, but once again a prestige film has a hideously bad score.
Yesterday was basically yesterday. I got seven-and-a-half hours of sleep, got up, answered e-mails, did a few things, including making sure another Sami clip got posted, then I did a Gelson’s run to get something for food, as I didn’t want to do pasta and make that mess. They had lox, which is unusual for a Thursday and there was a container with just the right amount and it looked like a good batch, so I got some bagels and cream cheese and came home and made two sandwiches, and they were just the right thing. Much later, I made a third sandwich. I had some telephonic conversations, the third part of the nice thing happened, which was great, and then I watched the movies.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, and then I’ll mosey on over to the mail place because books are arriving at some point – I’m hoping it’s both soft and hardcover, but sometimes one arrives before the other. We shall see. There’s also an Amazon order of Crest toothpaste waiting for me, since I’m almost out. I buy the five-pack and that usually lasts five or six months. Then I’ll be in the garage trying to locate a certain box that I cannot find – it’s somewhere and I just have to keep at it. I think what happened is the contents of this particular box got put into another box. I may have the rest of the lox, but if not I’ll make tuna sandwiches using the remaining bagels. Then at some point, I’ll watch, listen, and relax. Oh, I forgot to mention that the softcover is up at Amazon and so is the Kindle eBook – you can also “Look Inside” and read about eighteen pages.
Tomorrow, she of the Evil Eye will be here, so I’ll go have an early breakfast somewhere, and then I’ll do stuff until I come home. Then I can have a ME day. Sunday, I’ll be attending a matinee and then I’ll go have a nice meal somewhere. Then next week I should be able to place the book order, do Sami stuff, and do whatever else needs doing.
Let’s all put on our pointy party hats and our colored tights and pantaloons, let’s all break out the cheese slices and the ham chunks, let’s all dance the Hora or the Lambada, for today is the birthday of dear reader George. So, let’s give a big haineshisway.com birthday cheer to dear reader George. On the count of three: One, two, three – A BIG HAINESHISWAY.COM BIRTHDAY CHEER TO DEAR READER GEORGE!!!
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, I’ll hopefully pick up packages, I’ll eat, search the garage, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player and your DVD/Blu and Ray player? I’ll start – nothing. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have revisited the world of Easy Listening.