Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, taking an Easy Listening break from Mr. Munch with a tasty little album from the Dutch Claus Ogerman, Rogier van Otterloo entitled Collage. Rogier Van Otterloo is also a fine composer – he did all the Dutch Paul Verhoeven movies. He’s also done Claus-like albums of classical music with guitarist Jan Akkerman and flute player Thijs Van Leer. These are the kinds of albums I loved as a teen, these Easy Listening things and I still love them. Otherwise, I’m in the middle of watching an odd motion picture entitled The First Omen, a prequel to the first The Omen movie, the original, not the horrible remake. The fact that they think this is a franchise is everything wrong with the movie business. In fact, at the time this was released a couple of years ago, even the critics said maybe this would lead to more films in the franchise. Not everything needs to be a franchise and frankly The Omen didn’t really need any of the sequels, although numbers two and three have some fans, but what sequels don’t. I will say that this prequel is interesting visually and it’s very well directed by a woman whose first feature it is, very much in the classic moviemaking style and harkening back to the original movie. But an hour in and it’s a bit all over the place and not making much sense to me but maybe it will clear up. It certainly wasn’t a hit but did fare well with many critics. The actors are all fine – I never heard of the lead, Nell Tiger Free, yet another Brit playing an American, like there aren’t any American actresses to play American roles – go know. Sonia Braga is in it and so is Bill Nighy and Charles Dance. The score is interesting, too – some needle drops, some Jerry Goldsmith. We’ll see where it’s going from here. But as you know, I don’t really care for many directors today, so it’s nice to see something that’s not hipped up.
I did get ten hours of needed and excellent sleep. I awoke at noon due to a telephonic call with some decent news that at least keeps some hope alive, so that was nice. Hope being alive is the ticket, baby. I think this Rogier album Collage is a greatest hits thing, because I have some of these tracks on other albums, including the one playing now with the amazing Toots Thielmans on harmonica. Where was I? Oh yes, hope alive. I had an English muffin and took pill one, then went back to catching up on things. At around three, I was about to order some fried catfish from Uncle Andre’s, when I saw another fish jernt and for some reason I thought it was one that was in Tarzana that I’d been to, so I ordered from there instead – fried catfish and some red beans and rice and potato salad. Then I realized it was not the same place, so I checked out reviews – there are several branches of this jernt, this one being new and in North Hollywood.
Well, once I saw the reviews I knew I was in trouble – more one-star reviews than anything – with talk of food poisoning, lousy service, messed up orders, food that didn’t seem fresh. It did have the usual five-star reviews, too, but I did not have a good feeling. The food arrived about thirty minutes after it should have and – it was the wrong order. I took one look at the food, which did include fried catfish but in tandem with fried shrimp and I’m so glad it was the wrong order. I got an immediate full credit and ordered from Uncle Andre’s, it arrived quickly, and was, as always, great. I had potato salad with it. I took pill two and Prednisone.
Then I dozed off for a bit, got the title font for my friend’s book, so I did my usual “test” design, just to show the designer chapter heading positions and the general layout of the front matter. I do three chapters. It’s just a guide, but I think they find it helpful. The title font is the most unwieldy font I’ve ever seen. If the title is on three lines, which this is (on the cover it’s two lines, but that doesn’t work on the title and half-title pages), you can’t single space it as you normally would because the letters overlap all over the place. Crazy. So, I had to double space for it to look normal. I got the half-title and title pages looking fine, but it took eight tries for the chapter headings and subtitle to figure out the sizes that look best. It’s a very heavy and large font so I really had to make it small to look right – I finally found just the right balance. It was the opposite with that Disney font we used for Richard and Me, which was a teeny-tiny font that I had to enlarge hugely up to 48pt type. I guess they’re all different.
Then I watched the first hour of The First Omen, then had some triple berry cake (when I ordered it the night before, it was a buy one get one free deal, so the one slice was left over from that. It was good but I only ate half. I took pill three, and here we are.
Today, I’ll try to be up by ten, I’ll continue catching up on stuff and I do think that I’ll do the Cheesecake Factory for food in the afternoon. Then I’ll check and see what’s what at the mail place and if there’s any what’s what I’ll go retrieve it. After that, I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow is more of the same, and the weekend is mine all mine.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by ten, continue catching up, have lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, see what’s what at the mail place, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What franchises do you actually like and think hold interest? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, at least hopeful that hope is alive.