Balance In Monsoon Season

The morning didn't begin pleasantly for the second week in a row. I felt a funny tickle on my right side...and awoke to find myself staring at a gigantic, mutant-sized brown beetle! Ugh! I shook him off, then got him outside as quickly as possible.

Yoga was much better. We worked on freeing up joints and hips and opening the back of the legs. The bending and twisting poses didn't always feel the best on my knees, but I am getting better at them.

Headed for the Collingswood Library next. My volunteer session there was short this week. There was only one DVD to shelve and nothing upstairs. I organized the DVD shelves for a while, then headed straight home. It was too hot and humid to linger for very long!

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on editing Bowery Boys stories, going over some stories I hope to work on this summer, and watching Danger Mouse. If you grew up in the 80s and had Nickelodeon, you probably have very fond memories of Danger Mouse and his fellow British animated expatriates Count Duckula and Bananaman. This many have been my first exposure to dry, Monty Python-esque British humor.

If you're a fan of the Patrick McGoohan BBC series Danger Man/Secret Agent Man or Mission: Impossible, you know the drill. In each 10-15 minute episode, Danger Mouse and his sidekick Ernest Penfold (a hamster) are called on by Colonel K to save the world from the nefarious Baron Greenback (a frog) and his French crow lackeys. The plots may be some of the most bizarre ever found in animation, much less spy stories - pyramids suddenly appearing in the middle of London, a world inhabited by antique machines with lives of their own, Greenback flooding the Earth with custard, a pastel cloud that makes nightmares appear.

As you may have guessed, this is one strange show. I don't remember it being this surreal as a kid. The budget for Danger Mouse was apparently very limited, even by BBC standards. Thus, the animation consists of Monty Python-style cut-outs with lots of blank or pale-colored backgrounds. The makers had a lot of fun with this. Anything goes on this show, from Danger Mouse driving off the edge of the universe to him and Penfield being attacked by spaceships that look suspiciously like cut-outs of antiques.

Folks who like their humor more linear and less weird or prefer newer, less limited styles of animation will probably be baffled. For those of us who enjoyed the show in our youth or are fans of British comedy, this is highly recommended.

I could see clouds gathering on the horizon as I rode along to work. They were still pretty far away at that point. They waited until about 5:30-6PM to burst. And when they burst...they went CRAZY. I looked over my shoulder at one point and could see nothing but rain. One of the cashiers said it looked more like a blizzard! There was heavy thunder and lightening. Water bubbled up and flooded Aisle 1 and the hallway leading to the back lounge area. The lights in the Acme flickered on and off for almost an hour and actually went out twice. (We never lost the computers, thank goodness - they must be on a separate battery.)

Surprisingly, the storm only somewhat cleared out the store. Even after the monsoon started, it was fairly steady. I needed someone to come in for me when I finally left. By that point, the rain had ended, and the sun emerged...but I could see clouds building up again. I went straight home and in the shower. To my knowledge, it hasn't rained since then, but it's still cloudy.