Back to the Library Again

Started off today with the laundry, a walk to WaWa to get milk and a soda, and work in the yard. It was still cool and cloudy, but the humidity had increased, and the wind was gone. Picking up the sticks in the front yard wasn't too bad, except for the mosquitoes. They made a literal buffet out of my lower legs. (Good thing I wore capris today.)

I really do enjoy helping Miss Ellie out. She's an older woman and can't get around as well as she used to. Besides, I live here, too. I don't want to trip over sticks and acorns any more than she does, and I also want the yard to look nice. I left the sticks in a pile, as per Miss Ellie's instructions. I'll do the side path leading to my apartment tomorrow and rake the leaves and acorns later this week. (If I can - it's supposed to rain for the rest of the week.)

It was very, very quiet at Uncle Ken and Dad's today. Dad was the only one home, and he spent the morning cleaning out the pool and watering the plants in the pool area. Jessa was at school, Jodie was at work, and Uncle Ken and Dolores are still on vacation in North Carolina.

Headed to the library after lunch. There weren't many DVDs to put away, so I just organized the children's DVDs and put away children's Easy Reader books. The Easy Reader books are shorter than young adult chapter books and have pictures, but longer and more wordy than most picture books. Some of you may be familiar with the titles - Amanda and Oliver Pig, Nate the Great, Arthur the Hedgehog, Frog and Toad, and some of the most famous Dr. Seuss books, including The Cat In the Hat, fall into this category.

Made two quick stops on the way home. I browsed JoAnn's fall selection and checked out their hobby section. I remember seeing a line of 18-inch American Girl-like dolls in the Micheal's in the Consumer Square Mall when I was in college, but I didn't have the money for anything from the line at the time. (Not to mention the modern clothes didn't really go with my Victorian doll Samantha.) I was hoping JoAnn's carried the line, but no dice. I didn't see anything related to doll-making at all, not even clothing patterns. I'd really like to find some clothes for Little Jessa, especially pants. Felicity needs clothes, too.

I stopped at Super Fresh for their peanut butter sale ($1.34 for Skippy Super Chunk Natural), then headed home. I read the book I took out of the Haddon Township Library on finding careers after college (I must have done something wrong there) and watched the 1982 musical Grease 2.

Yes, Grease 2 is the infamous sequel to the 1972 stage show and 1978 movie Grease. It's 1961, two years after the original movie and show were set. Poodle skirts have been replaced by straight skirts, hot cars by hot motorcycles, soda shoppes by bowling alleys, and Eisenhower-era conformity by Kennedy-era optimism. The Pink Ladies and the T-Birds are still the ultimate in cool at Rydell High School...but head Pink Lady Stephanie is sick of obnoxious head T-Bird Johnny and decides she wants something more mature in a man and a motorcycle. That cute new British guy Michael might be the one...but he's the smartest kid in school, and there's a code that says the Birds and the Ladies can't date outside their clique. Michael, however, turns out to be smart in more ways than even he dreamed of...

Ok, so it's cheesy, most of the songs are pretty bad, the main plot is a rehash of the one in the first Grease, and it lacks the grit of the original stage and movie versions. On the other hand, I actually like how that "uncool kid into cool kid" plot is handled here better. Sandy's transformation, both in the show and the movie, always seemed to happen too fast. (It's slightly better-explained in the movie's novelization.) Here, Michael's change from shy, smart Brit to hot biker is done far more gradually...and instead of just turning up in the last few minutes, it drives most of the film. And unlike Sandy, Michael's not asked to give up being smart. As Stephanie says at the end, she gets two for the price of one, a hot biker and a hot genius...and she likes him that way.

The numbers are a bigger problem. They range from one of the best opening numbers in a movie musical ("Back to School Again") and one of the funniest ("Reproduction"), to some of the most banal and silliest lyrics to ever appear in a movie musical ("Who's That Guy?," "Rock-A-Hula Luau"). My favorite number is the Pink Ladies' "Girls For All Seasons" in the Talent Show towards the end. I love all the detail put into this sequence. The costumes really do look like a group of teenage girls in 1961's idea of glamor. Mom says Sharon's March Shamrock costume, for instance, is based around an early 60s Girl Scout uniform - she says it looks exactly like the one she wore as child during the early 60s.

(Mom also swears her sex-ed classes used to get almost as wild as the "Reproduction" number.)