Dear Deers and Other Tales

My phone rang less than ten minutes after my eyes opened this morning. It was Donna, the head front end manager at the Acme. Did I want to come in for a few hours this morning? They were really low on help. Heck YEAH I wanted to come in! I needed the hours rather badly, and I'd be in eventually anyway to pick up my paycheck. I was hoping I'd get called in sometime this week. I have bills to pay and I'm trying to save for my vacation.

Work, thankfully, was no problem other than we really did lack help. It was steady, but the lines were only long because we didn't have enough people to open enough registers. My relief was on time, and I was able to get in and out with no trouble.

Despite the heat and humidity, I decided to do what I'd planned to do that afternoon and went to the Willie the Woodsman Gift Shop on Pine Street between Audubon and Haddon Heights, since the Acme's not far from there anyway. I'm on their mailing list, and they sent me an e-mail last night that said they'd just gotten in this month's new WebKinz. I almost got the Lil'Kinz Blue Jay, but finally ended up with the adorable Deer.

The rest of the afternoon was spent messing around with my new MP3 player at home and watching DVDs. I did Strawberry Shortcake after I got in and The Big Bus during dinner. The Big Bus turned out to be a spoof of disaster movies, released four years before a more famous action-movie satire, Airplane!. While lacking some of that movie's more inventive (and raunchy) gags, it's a surprisingly fun ride on it's own merits. A cast of kooky stereotypes find themselves on the maiden voyage of the Cyclops, the first nuclear-powered bus, which is going non-stop from New York to Denver.

One of the things I like about this film is, for all the gags (the bus contains a separate dining room, a pool, a bowling alley, a lounge, and an all-microwave kitchen, among other odd luxuries you won't find on Greyhound), you really do feel the suspense when the bus almost goes over a cliff, and the bus' designer Stockard Channing almost drowns in soda (long story). The cast was great, too. In addition to Channing, we have Joseph Bologna as the head bus driver and her ex-boyfriend who was once accused of cannibalism, Richard Mulligan and Sally Kellerman as a bickering couple about to divorce, Rene Auberjonois as a conflicted priest, and Ruth Gordon as the old lady who gets stuck listening to the priest. Lynn Redgrave and Murphy Dunne have the most fun as, respectively, a fashion designer with the campiest fall line this side of the La Cage Aux Follies musical and Murphy Dunne as the incredibly tactless lounge pianist.

Only one major complaint - what in the HECK happened to the ending? The movie ends at least ten or fifteen minutes sooner than it really should, and several plot threads are never resolved. (We never do find out of the bus ever made it to Denver.)

(Another question - I wonder what happened to the bus itself? IMDb mentions that the exteriors were done on an actual mega-bus, not a model or a miniature or computer effects. I imagine it's probably rusting in some airplane hanger somewhere...)

Oh, and meet Rhonda the Deer! She's taking care of Duke the Lil'Kinz Pig for now in his Farm Room, but since deers are usually not welcome on farms (where they're often considered pests), she'll be moving to the fall-themed rooms I'm hoping to make after this year's Fall-Fest in October.