The Lost Weekend

In Lanford Wilson's play, "The Fifth of July," Ken Talley summarizes his Lost Weekend in the line, "On a scale of one to ten, I'm about ready to show up on the chart any minute, now..."

Which is pretty much what I'm feeling like, this Monday morning – Columbus Day holiday not withstanding. Unfortunately my lost weekend was not the result of hedonistic celebrations (not that Columbus Day is one of the greater holidays on my social calendar) but rather the siege of the Annual Change of Season Cold. Or possibly the flu, since it was more wall-to-wall aches and pains than acres of mucous and great fields of snot.

One of my routines on a Sunday is to prepare the Monday installment of "The Lost Chord," but between the frequent crashing of the computer, then the incessant crashing of my immune system, that will have to take place either much later this afternoon or, more likely, tomorrow.

I have also been hard at work this last week getting a new "music appreciation thriller" started called "The Doomsday Symphony," working on the back-story of one of the villains, Dr. Klavdia Klangfarben and her side-kick Abner Kedaver. She is a recently graduated forensic musicologist from Claxon University where she studied with Dr. Frøkken Bohr but, unable to find any work in her chosen field and after working at fast food restaurants and Walmart, takes on on-line course with Phil Noir to earn her FFH License – Femme Fatale for Hire which is how she ends up working for N. Ron Steele, the CEO of SHMRG (one of the more nefarious organizations in the classical music business). After describing her, walking along NYC's 6th Avenue on a hot July day, as neither too tall nor too short, not too svelte nor too voluptuous, dressed despite the heat in a coal-black leotard with coal-black stilettos heels that made her platinum wig beneath the floppy coal-black hat, flounce as she walked. "Her partner, Abner Kedaver, being invisible, was harder to describe." You get the drift...

But for now, the weekend continues – back to the recliner and another dose of DayQuil. Maybe at the end of the day, I will feel a tad closer to being human.