Tap Your Troubles Away

Started the morning with...sunshine. Sunshine and 80 degree temperatures. Yeah, I was shocked, too. And though the sun was in and out all day, it was warmer and less humid today than it has been the past few weeks.

I spent the morning refilling the cookie jar. I wanted a hard cookie that would stand up to the recent humidity we've been having and not go moldy in a few days. I made another spice cookie, Old-Fashioned Ginger Cookies from my British cookie and scone cookbook. They came out quite nicely, hard but not tough on the teeth, very spicy, and just sweet enough.

Ran Jerry Herman cast albums while the cookies baked. My favorite of Jerry Herman's scores is also his, the much-maligned Mack and Mabel. Wonderful music (including one of my favorite ballads from a musical, "I Won't Send Roses")...but this re-telling of the real-life doomed relationship between silent movie comedy legends Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand has always had book problems. There's no way to add a happy ending to this tale - Normand became a drug-addict and died in her 30s. Sennett lived longer, but died washed-up and forgotten by the industry he helped to popularize.

Herman's other shows are more fun. For a change, I put on the wonderful Pearl Bailey cast album for Hello Dolly!. Not that I have anything against Carol Channing or Barbara Streisand, but Bailey's really great, and backed up by a surprisingly good - if unlikely - Horace Vandergelder, Cab Calloway. Listened to the classic original cast album for Mame with Angela Landsbury after that, which I have on LP.

Spent the rest of the afternoon after lunch at the library. I had a lot to return, and in turn, took out three books, two of the most recent Garfield comic books, a cookbook of Pilsbury Bake-Off recipes, and three DVDs. Once again put away piles of DVDs, though the piles were a bit smaller this time. Some of it may have had to do with the improving weather; it may also have had to do with getting out earlier than I have in the last couple of weeks, arriving around 1PM instead of after 3.

I was in the library for a while. I didn't get out until after 4. I made a quick stop to see if Super Fresh had buttermilk; they did, but Acme's buttermilk is cheaper and lower in fat. I'll wait for them to restock.

Watched High School Musical 3: Senior Year after I came home and while I made salmon, spinach salad, and sauteed yellow squash and onions for dinner. This time, the energetic kids from East High find themselves involved with a school musical based after their lives...but with questions of college and life after high school looming, there's a matter of who will actually be in the show and who won't...

I know a lot of people find these musicals to be superficial and silly...but they're really no worse than the Grease movies or Good News, their spiritual grandparents. My biggest complaints from the previous movies remain. The solos are boring, the ensembles and small groups electrifying. The kids are talented, even when the script is banal. The costume designer still needs to be shot. The dancing is amazing. I hope to see all of these kids go on to other, better-written projects; maybe even see some of them in more adult-oriented movie musicals someday.