Happy Late Night, Sweet Baby,
I hope you had a nice day, as always. Mine was busy again. My sister Vickie came over and we went to lunch with Pearl and her daughter Helen at a semi-famous Chinese restaurant in Reseda called The Great Wall. It is located just a couple doors down from the hair salon I take Pearl to every Thursday. We used to take my Dad there a lot, and this was kind of a belated Mother's Day lunch for Pearl, who also loves the place and has been going there for many years. We had a ton of food - Szechwan Beef for me, which I enjoyed with hot Chinese mustard and Sriracha chili sauce, different from their regular hot sauce and also super delicious. The Great Wall is semi-famous because there have been some TV shows shot there, and a movie from a few years ago called "Drive" w/Ryan Gosling. In the movie, Albert Brooks calls him and actually tells him : "Meet me at The Great Wall in Reseda", or something very close to that, and when they are finished eating (spoiler alert!), he kills Gosling in the parking lot, just a few rows back from where I park for Pearl on hair salon days, haha.
Well anyway, that's a bit of Reseda trivia for you. :)
After lunch, I chilled out back at home for a while and then went up to Aliso at 6pm for a full length walk : 4 miles (two each way). I don't usually get to go at that time of the evening, so it is nice to see the change in atmosphere when it is enveloped in shadow and the frogs begin to "ribbit". And the bunnies come out, too. Ribbits and Rabbits.........(aw, c'mon Ad - bad pun. But I didn't plan it in advance, really SB)
Tonight I watched an excellent Film Noir called "The Brothers Rico" (1957). Richard Conte plays the eldest brother, a former Mob accountant who has gone straight and now owns a thriving laundry business. He has a wife and they are adopting a baby, an angle you don't usually see in crime movies. But he also has two younger brothers who are still in the Mob, and who have recently pulled off a contract "hit". The brothers are On The Lam, worried about being eliminated themselves now that they've got the job done, and Conte - the "honest" brother - is caught between a rock and a hard place because his former Mob cohorts want him to track down his brothers so that they can be confronted over their unexplained absence (i.e. killed).
Once again, I must go on a Brief Tirade about the importance of the screenwriter in the creation of a film. "The Brothers Rico" runs a standard (for a Noir) 90 minutes, but so much story is packed into that time period that it feels like an epic, like a modern movie that is 2 1/2 hours. And that's because great screenwriters in the old days didn't waste time. Instead, they filled it. Every scene counted, and every word of dialogue. It also doesn't hurt when you are working off a book by Georges Simenon, the famous French mystery writer of "Maigret" fame. But this is much more Hard Boiled.
A great movie, I give it Five Stars.
The rest of the day, in between, was The Usual Reading (including Steve Jones' book "Lonely Boy". "Jonesey" was the guitarist in The Sex Pistols and now has a radio show here in L.A. Grim read his book and recommended it to me) and also The Usual CSUN walk for a total of seven miles for the day.
I saw two posts, one for The Fine Constant's tour with Marty Friedman. That is awesome for Sarah and Steve. The other post was a pair of socks (!) advertising Summerfest 50, which I imagine you will be going to.
I trust all projects are going well, and your own music too. I love this time of year, as Spring heads into Summer.......
See you in the morning!
I Love You. xoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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