10 February 2023

[KathyB]

I just set up my Brand New Television, which I had to get because yesterday Old Television died. The picture was completely black, although the sound was working. I stopped at Costco on my way home and got the only 32" television they had. I honestly don't have room for anything bigger on top of my dresser. I am guessing that by the time this TV goes bye-bye, no one will be making 32" TVs any more.

I believe I got it set up correctly and connected to the Internet properly, but honestly, if it gets PBS and the channel that Jeopardy! is on, I don't care much about the rest. Oh, yeah, I also thought that I might want to catch some part of the Superb Owl this weekend.

Maybe after Jeopardy! tonight, I'll play around with it and see all the fabulous things it can do.

<---Old fogey

[scenicdesign71]

Yay, new TV!    New technology (audio/video/computer) always makes a nice change.  I'm excited for you and Bernadette to discover all the fabulous things!

Just about when you started this new daily thread, I was getting home from a long day at the end of a long week.  I still don't know why it was all so long.  Four out of five days were spent on-location, which usually makes the day go faster (as compared to staying at the studio).  And at least one or two of those were actually somewhat short days, hour-wise.  (Balancing that, the one studio day was a bit long at 12 hrs, but easy).  There were some busy stretches and some dull ones, but nothing super stressful either way.  Still, for whatever reason, the whole week has felt endless.

Tomorrow morning I'm getting an overdue haircut.  Then, tomorrow afternoon, I'll be visiting a friend on Long Island to help her with an interesting prop project she's working on for a new musical out in L.A.: a series of cartoonishly gruesome figurative clay sculptures about which I probably shouldn't give away any details (but the show, a "beatnik horror comedy" explicitly courting comparison to Little Shop of Horrors, is freely adapted from another early Roger Corman movie whose plot is detailed here).*  My friend has been working on these sculptures off and on for the past couple of months, periodically texting me progress photos and picking my brain for advice.  I visited her last weekend to help out a bit, and they're coming along really nicely; I'm flattered that she wants my skills and input as these pieces move into their final phases, and it gives me something quasi-creative as well as quasi-social to do for a few weekends.

I will probably stay out on L.I. tomorrow night to sculpt for a few more hours on Sunday.  But I want to get home by around midafternoon for at least a little true R&R before starting another busy workweek at my "real" job.  As production starts winding down on Season 3 (this past week we began work on its penultimate episode, and we should be moving into the season finale by the end of the month), things just seem to get even bigger and more complicated, so I imagine next week -- and the three or four after that -- will feel long as well.  I'm not certain, but I believe we get the Monday after next off for President's Day... here's hoping.


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*Spoiler: a hapless loser stumbles into overnight success after a harmless hobby turns bizarrely deadly — then finds he must keep killing in order to hold onto his newfound celebrity and win the girl of his dreams... does any of this sound familiar?  Released the year before Corman's original Little Shop, his A Bucket of Blood was faithfully remade for cable in 1995 as The Death Artist, with Anthony Michael Hall as the titular coffeehouse busboy-turned-hipster sculptor, and Justine Bateman inexplicably sporting a ludicrous Eurotrash accent as his would-be love interest.  There have also been at least three previous attempts to turn ABoB into a stage musical, including one called Beatsville by Alan Menken's frequent post-Ashman collaborator Glenn Slater.  Producers and adaptors presumably can't resist hoping that this source material might offer an automatic head-start toward Little Shop-style blockbusterdom -- and while I'm doubtful that that particular lightning can be bottled, what do I know?  Despite being built on largely the same template as the 1960 LSoH, by the same director and screenwriter, and even filmed on the same (redressed) sets, the 1959 ABoB does have its own distinct charm.  It's arguably a better-made movie of its kind, even if its central gimmick, borrowed from the venerable subgenre of waxwork horror, is a notch or two less deliciously batshit-bonkers than Little Shop's bloodthirsty talking plant.  And while Menken nudged the latter's musical idiom into bright bubblegum pop and early R&B, ABoB's primary setting of a smoky, bohemian underground club would seem to keep it firmly rooted in the sound of beatnik jazz, a relatively underexplored genre for musical theatre.  So you can't blame people for trying.