Well, dear readers, sometimes a little Faure is just the ticket, and therefore a little Faure is what I am sitting here like so much fish listening to. A Chandos disc that has one choral piece I’ve never heard before and it’s a delight. The main piece is, of course, the Faure Requiem, a classic that I must have ten different versions of. We’ll see how this one compares to the ones I love best. The big news is that I had the finessing the mixes and recording a vocal day wrong – I thought it was today, but it’s tomorrow, so I get one more day to rest my voice, and that’s probably a good thing. But that’s today. What about yesterday. Let us not forget about yesterday. Let’s not leave yesterday out in the cold. The storm of the century provided about thirty minutes of rain at one point in the afternoon and that was it. One Facebook page for Fox channel eleven here did some stats saying this was record rainfall, the highest in certain areas since 1971. This is how stupid these people are. They listed all these areas but conveniently left out the Oaks of Sherman, the City of Studio, Encino – and just put others. As far as I know, there was no record rainfall in 1971, but there was a pretty bad earthquake. Maybe they got confused. So, I corrected them and said THIS rainfall certainly didn’t break the record rainfall of winter 2004 – THAT record rainfall twenty-one years ago, broke all records for the fifty years prior to that. But as I’ve said repeatedly, they thrive on panic and fear as it’s what gets them ratings, clicks, and views. I got a bit over ten hours of sleep, got up, answered a few e-mails, then ate my first meal of tuna pasta salad and took the first meal pills. Then I watched some pit maneuver videos, more Graham Norton interviews (all the Cher appearances), Marshall Harvey came and picked up his coat, I did a little writing for the upcoming book and did some research I needed to do to be accurate, ate my second meal of tuna pasta salad and took pill two, then I sat on my couch like so much fish and watched the new PBS American Masters documentary on Dick Van Dyke, and it’s pretty terrific. He really does seem like one of the nicest guys in show business. It does go into his alcoholism, which he’s always been frank about, but it’s his joy in performing that shines through. It skirts through the career slumps, but he survives it all and is still a force to be reckoned with at 100 years of age. While they do go quickly past his several 1960s post Mary Poppins flop movies, there is, oddly, not a single mention of The Music Man, which he starred in, and which I saw. The talking heads are all appropriate – Julie Andrews, Carol Burnett, Mary Tyler Moore, of course, Rose Marie, plus older stuff with Carl Reiner and contemporaneous interviews. There’s some great Bye Bye Birdie footage, and some shocking footage of the idiots in Hollywood making him test for the film version of Birdie. One of the problems of Birdie post Van Dyke’s performance, is they kept hiring good singers but not comedians – people like Gene Rayburn and the wonderful Bill Hayes and Peter Marshall, and the show was never as funny, good as they probably were. And then Tommy Tune, who’s not funny at all. Even in the film you can see how funny Van Dyke must have been in the show. The most amazing quote from that time is Van Dyke telling Gower Champion, who’d seen him in a failed musical revue, that he couldn’t really sing or dance – and Champion telling him don’t worry about the dance, I’ll teach you. Turns out he must have learned really well.
We get a lot of The Dick Van Dyke Show clips and they’re wonderful. I don’t actually know if I’ve ever mentioned it, but I went to a filming of one of the episodes. I remember very little other than Morey and Rose Marie doing a lot of jokes between set-ups and that it wasn’t that funny an episode. One of the guest stars names keeps trying to pop into my head but won’t quite make itself known, other than my memory says the name at that time confused me as it sounded like Carl Reiner’s. I know it was probably in 1964 or 1965, at least I think so. I should look those seasons up. And I did and I found it, and my memory did not fail me. The guest star was Carl Benton Reid. Carl Reid/Carl Reiner. He did two episodes, one in 1962 and one in 1964 and as I read user reviews of both, neither, according to the user reviews, were that funny. I’m gonna guess I saw the 1962 episode, as that’s when I was going to a lot of Red Skelton tapings and other show tapings. Of course, I also went to Danny Kaye tapings in 1964, but it’s one of those two. Mystery solved. Anyway, this comes highly recommended by the likes of me.
After that, I watched a few more You Tube videos, polished off the rest of the tuna pasta salad and took pill three and here we are.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll eat something light – no more pasta for a while – so perhaps a turkey sandwich as I have yet another 50% off coupon, then I’m just going to rest my voice, maybe move some stuff to the garage if it’s dry out, and, of course, watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow is our finessing the mixes and vocals session at noon-thirty – shouldn’t really take more than two hours, three at the most – then when that’s done, I’ll go to the mail place and see what’s what, then come home, eat, and enjoy the rest of the day and evening. Monday is a ME day, Tuesday a writer acquaintance is taking me to lunch to tell me about an idea she has for a play, Wednesday is our Annual Rockin’ New Year’s Eve Bash, always a safe and fun way to spend New Year’s Eve and yes, we will watch many balls drop, Thursday is a New Year, New Book, and perhaps a small get-together in the afternoon, which I always like to do. The Friday day I’m working with the lighting designer for most of the day, doing a dry tech, then Friday evening we do a run-through and light-over, even though we’re missing an ensemble gal – supposedly, I knew this, but I have no memory of it. She does a lot in the show, so it’s not optimal, but we must do a run-through and we will. Saturday and Sunday are five-hour rehearsal days and that’s a good thing and we’d best have everyone in attendance or there will be hell toupee. In fact, Sunday I want two run-throughs.
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, eat something light, rest my voice, maybe move stuff to the garage, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite performances of Mr. Dick Van Dyke? Let’s have loads of lovely postings shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have seen the Dick Van Dyke PBS documentary. And I’ll leave you with this, my one and only interaction with Mr. Van Dyke: Had to be 1988 because the only show he did that year was a failed CBS six-episode series called the Van Dyke Show. While there’s no information as to where the interiors were filmed, all I know is I was at Laird Studios (now The Culver Studios) where we’d shot The Creature Wasn’t Nice, and I’d taken over the shooting of Prime Suspect and we were cutting the film at the studio and I also had to shoot some pick-up scenes there. I was walking to the soundstage we were on and there was Mr. Van Dyke getting out of his car, carrying some clothes or wardrobe. He smiled at me, that huge smile of his, and said, “Great to be on a lot, isn’t it?” I smiled and waved to him. That was it. And it was always great to be on a lot.