Up at 8, at the computer by 8:10. Had to fix one more technical glitch on the website, then on to scripts which have to be finished pretty soon. They're for a cartoon show we're recording on Monday.
Ate, showered, dressed and made it up to UCLA by 11:30. At 11:50, I phoned Sergio who (I figured out) was doing a panel with Stan Sakai at the Motor City Comic Con near Detroit. If you're near there, go by tomorrow and say howdy to the both of them. I like heckling Sergio when he's in the middle of a panel.
At Noon, I appeared on the stage of the Freud Theater with a wonderful lady named Claudette Sutherland, who was in the original Broadway production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. A superb revival, about which I still need to rave here, is being performed eight times a week on that stage. As I've mentioned here, on Saturdays, they have these free lectures or seminars or whatever you call them. The idea is to have a noted theatrical scholar lecture on the history of the show…and if they can't find one, they call me. Sometimes, there's an interview of someone who, like Claudette, was there when it started. I had a great time interviewing her and discussing folks she worked with like Frank Loesser, Robert Morse, Bob Fosse, Rudy Vallee and Charles Nelson Reilly.
I'm doing another one of these next Saturday. Not sure yet if Claudette can juggle her schedule and come back or if it'll be just me. I'll let you know when she lets me know.
When it was over, I took Sunset to the 405 North to the 101 North to Encino and only missed the first half hour or so of a wonderful memorial service for our friend Eddie Carroll. I wrote about Eddie here…a dear man who had an awful lot of friends and zero enemies. The place was packed and no one budged even though the speeches totalled about two and a half hours. Eddie knew an awful lot of funny people.
And now I'm back here, locked in until I finish scripts. So once again, I've put the soup can up…just my way of alerting friends that I'm not returning calls or e-mails as rapidly as I should. I won't be posting much here except, of course, when I do this, I always find myself having to stop work and post an obit. Let's see if I can get through this little intense work period without that happening.