What a great Sunday in the Hinterlands!

Yes! I am going to do everything possible to make this day drag on forever! Because tomorrow is my last day of vacation.

But on a happy note — chances are that my next “vacation” will be because I’ll have to go back to NYC to work with Sandra.

So. Yay! For the next vacation!

I sat at my desk for quite a while yesterday, trying to focus on all the notes for the primary characters in our TV project, and bring them into some sort of organized paragraph(s), but it did not happen.

However.

When I awoke at 3:12AM this morning!! It was all there in my brain and starting to take shape. So that was exciting!

I know today is going to be really productive.

Overall, it has been a really productive vacation.

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I found this online yesterday — I was only about 2 weeks late in seeing it.

The publisher of my upcoming novel, The Curse of Our Profound Disorder, made an announcement all over social media about contracting the book.

This is taken from their official website, where they said, in part:

“Something about her writing style drew me in and mesmerized me. In general, I cringe at first-person stories, passive voice and dialect, but in Marilyn’s hands, something magical happened as I read.

I stood uncomfortably in the middle of her grand boudoir while I watched her light a cigarette. Her room was filled with furniture, most of it white, and on every available table, bureau, and shelf, there were pretty things. Things made of crystal or porcelain, things that looked old and expensive. It was a huge room with a very high ceiling. Even with all that furniture and all those pretty things, the room didn’t feel crowded.

“Main character Jemima always knew that she was the illegitimate offspring of the local married preacher. Her mama, impregnated in the backseat of a Plymouth at age 15, explains lust and sexual pleasure as the presence of God. Jemima has a hard life, but sees the world pragmatically, with beauty at times.”

Coming soon, gang!

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Okay!

A couple of heavenly birthdays today!

First, one of my favorite rebels of all time!

Happy heavenly birthday, James Dean. RIP.

If you’re too young to have ever seen this movie, here’s a great clip. I still get chills and some tears in my eyes. “Rebel Without A Cause,” 1955 (3mins):

James Dean was killed 5 years before I was born, but back in the old days in NYC, there were plenty of retro movie houses where you could go see all the great old movies.

So I was able to see all of James Dean’s movies on the big screen. Incredible.

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Apparently, it is also Neal Cassady’s heavenly birthday today:

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And speaking of NYC (well, I sort of was, up there above)–

One of my legendary abodes there, the Camelot Bldg. on W.45th & 8th Ave, was only a few blocks away from the infamous Peppermint Lounge!!

By the time I lived there, though, the Peppermint Lounge had closed and then briefly re-opened (still on W.45th Street), and in that immortal & fleeting time, I saw many bands play there, including many of my friends’ bands.

And here’s this!!

From Phyllis Stein’s re-booted Instagram page!! Johnny Thunders at the Peppermint Lounge in 1981:

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And here’s this!

The New York Dolls in LA, at the Whisky A Go-Go in 1973!

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Okay, gang. Who knew??!!!

I sure did not!

But it turns out that the Orient Express has an Instagram page!! Yay!!

I immediately started following it. And then noticed, with overjoyed excitement, that the Orient Express is also followed by Marlon Richards’ wife, Lucie de la Falaise!!

This ad was in my Instagram feed yesterday. Yay!!

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And speaking of Keith Richards, smoking and barefoot! (sort of…)

Here are Marlon Richards’ illustrious parents, Keith and Anita:

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And here’s Keith, smoking but probably not barefoot, but I’m not 100% certain:

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And here’s this!

Nick Cave in London in 1982, in no way interested in getting up to get an ashtray!! (I think he actually quit smoking because he was tired of having to always get up and get an ashtray, but I’m not 100% certain. That might just be part of the myths & legends.)

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Okay, so is anybody in the US going to watch the Super Bowl tonight??

I probably will not. Only because, well, I don’t have a huge interest in football, but it also has sad memories for me now. Especially with my favorite client, Molly, passing away last year right after the Super Bowl, which we were supposed to watch together but she was taken to the hospital and then she died.

And now of course with my dad being dead now, too. He was a big Super Bowl watcher. Well, football, in general. The Cleveland Browns were always on our TV in the 1960s.

Our humble abode in Cleveland, 1963-1966

And Wayne, who is still very much alive, always had his guy friends over on Super Bowl Sunday, and they ordered in pizzas, and drank beer and smoked Camel cigarettes and got rowdy and had fun.

I usually sat in the back bedroom and quietly drank Saint-Émilion and smoked a Chesterfield or two and watched an old movie, but it was still fun having all that noise in the apartment.