Change is not necessarily progress

What a shock when the car radio came on as I started off on an errand. A discussion of "dress for success" was in progress! What? This is supposed to be an "all jazz station." Fine, they added "Friday Freeway Blues" some time ago, I could deal with that, but then recently they added weekend roots music, which is going too far (Yes, I love roots music, I even play it, but it doesn't belong on an "all jazz" station), and now this, talk radio or something? I switched to the classical station in shock.

On the way home, a second try. Aha, it was fund-raising time, apparently various guests were on plugging the station. Presumably they are not adding discussion shows, New Age shows, and all the rest of the fashionable stuff. All jazz (with a Friday freeway exception)!

And how I miss Dr. Jazz, the weekend dixieland guy, so warm and personable, a radio legend in his way, and the show suffers without him because the new young guys talk too damn much and try too damn hard to have a radio personality (if you have to try, you don't have one)...and why the hell they don't just play tapes of old Dr. Jazz shows is beyond me.

Once I get into NAILS IN MY COFFIN, it should be a ball because I get to sublimate all my old man bitching into my characters in a dark comic light, not only poking fun at the culture but at myself, and there's nothing quite like poking fun at yourself. You become your own best comic material. I'm glad I set everything else aside (Sally, Cold War, two novels in progress and now hibernating) to do this now because it's what I've been obsessing about, not the other, I suppose because the material (aging, dying) is so close to me since the death of my best friends, leaving me to be next.

So I'm not really in gear yet with COFFIN but I'm getting close. I think I have a shot at drafting it before summer.

I've also been thinking about what to do with video. I don't what to repeat what I did this summer. I mean, I could make short films like that for as long as I have but I need something different. I'd like to do a series -- the same character in different situations. I also like the voice I used in Sunset Hearts ... I want to do something more with it. I also want to do more with Judith Richmond, whose talent is extraordinary. But nothing has come together to excite me yet.

My "deadline job" is a screenplay, and I've fallen a tad behind but hope to catch up this weekend.

Off to piano class in a minute. I get lazy because I seem to progress more quickly than the others and the class is aimed at the lowest common denominator. But that's fine. I'm in no rush and have no desire to actually perform, my interest here and in theory is in future composition for dramatic projects. I performed a lot through the 60s, 70s and 80s but I think my live performance days are over.

I used to sound like this.