Well, dear readers, yytu – oops, there was some dirt on the keyboard, and I had to remove it, which resulted in yytu – of course, those in the know know exactly what yytu stands for – yes your toes undulate. And we’re off and running, notes-wise. First of all, I did not realize this was a holiday weekend, so for those who didn’t know, this is a holiday weekend. It doesn’t feel like a holiday weekend and yet it is. As I type these here notes, I am listening to a new recording featuring pianist Clare Hammond with the BBC Orchestra conducted by George Vass. I’ve never heard of either, but it showed up in Apple Music, so I downloaded it. The first piece is Sinfonia Concertante for Orchestra with piano obbligato. I like a nice obbligato every now and then, usually with butter and cheese. Walton is one of my favorite English composers and this is a wonderful piece and it’s beautifully performed here in great sound. I only have one other recording, with Walton conducting – I’ll have to give that a listen. The other two works on this new album are Michael Tippit’s Diversions, which I don’t know at all, and Britten’s piano concerto, which I really like – again, I only have one other recording, conducted by Britten. But so far, this new album is a winner. Back from a telephonic call. I did watch two count them two motion pictures. The first motion picture was entitled Ice Road: Vengeance, a sequel to The Ice Road, starring the ubiquitous Liam Neeson. I never saw The Ice Road, which I gather is a riff on The Wages of Fear, the Clouzot film classic. But this sequel is just another Neeson action film – it’s preposterous right from the start and it’s thirty minutes too long, but I always enjoy Neeson, so I stuck with it. It has two endings too many, a ridiculous score, bad CGI, cardboard, indestructible villains who ultimately finally get theirs. We get an action scene, followed by a tender scene of emotion – that’s the structure from beginning to end. They could remove half the tender scenes of emotion. The other motion picture was from 1991 and one I was interested in seeing even back then but stayed away from because it was supposed to be so violent and gory – Body Parts was and is the title, and my interest in it was that it was adapted from the book Choice Cuts by Boileau and Narcejac, the French writers from France who wrote two famous books turned into two classic movies – the movies being Diabolique and Vertigo. As it turns out, it wasn’t adapted from the book – it was an original screen story that had way too many similarities to Choice Cuts, so Paramount bought the rights to the book. The book credit doesn’t appear in the main titles – it doesn’t appear until the very end of the end credits. Anyway, it’s a riff on The Hands of Orlac or The Beast with Five Fingers, wherein a man loses an arm in a car accident and a doctor does a transplant using the arm of an executed murderer. But the director loves his gory grand guignol imagery, so the film really devolves in its final third. But I’m glad to have finally seen it. Jeff Fahey is the star, along with Brad Dourif and Kim Delaney. I did like the score by Dutch Loek Dikker. We did it on Varese, so I’ll try to find it out in the garage.
I only got about four hours of sleep thanks to the morons across the street and their endless never-ending work on the monstrosity they’ve foisted on the neighborhood. I did some errands – banking, picking up a small package, and Gelson’s. Once home, I made faux chicken stroganoff for food – a very tasty batch it was, too. I did some stuff on the computer, watched some irritating YouTube videos, then watched the first movie. After that, I had my snack – a small green salad – took the last of the pills and then watched the second movie. And here we are.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll have another ME day and try to list more stuff on eBay – I just have to pull out stuff and photo it – it’s a chore, but I have some great stuff to put up, some of which may interest you dear readers and lurkers. I’ll link to it when it’s done. I’m thinking about making tuna pasta salad before going to bed and if I do that will be today and tomorrow’s food. If not, I’ll order something in. Mostly, I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow is Columbus Day or Indigenous People Day and so I’ll just hang out and relax. Tuesday, we have another casting session, Wednesday is callbacks, and we’ll assess where we are at that point. I did have an inspired idea for one of the leads and I wrote him but haven’t heard back from him. There will be a couple of meetings and meals, too.
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 another ME day, try to list a few eBay items, I’ll either have tuna pasta salad or bring something in – I’m actually craving a steak. Gelson’s steak prices are out of control so I may mosey on over to Ralph’s and see what’s what, steak-wise. Then I’ll 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, where I shall dream of tender scenes of emotion and hopefully not body parts.