August In New Jersey

Started today with April In Paris, the first of two Doris Day musicals I transferred to DVD. One of Day's lesser vehicles has her as a sassy chorus girl who is mistakenly sent to Paris for an arts festival by straight-laced bureaucrat Ray Bolger. She and Bolger are mismatched, but they do get one good number on the ship bound for France, "We're Gonna Ring the Bell Tonight."

Did the laundry next. It was surprisingly quiet for the lunch hour. I'm guessing the continuing heat and humidity kept people away. I didn't linger, either. I did my laundry and went home.

Had leftovers for lunch while running the Schoolhouse Rock 30th Anniversary set. In addition to Money Rock, which would have been on TV in the mid-80s, there's a few additional Grammar Rock and Multiplication Rock numbers that didn't make it to Linda's video. The touching tale of "Mr. Morton," which covers the parts of a sentence, was my favorite of the new material. The other ones I hadn't seen include "Busy Prepositions" from Grammar Rock and "The Good Eleven" and the odd science-fiction-themed "Little Twelvetoes" from Multiplication Rock.

Work was almost exactly the same as yesterday - busy for most of the night, until about an hour before closing. Other than that, there were no major problems, and I was in and out quickly.

I ran Love Me Or Leave Me, the last Day musical I was moving to DVD, when I got home. A hard-hitting biography of 20s and 30s singer Ruth Etting, Leave Me is one of my favorites of her movies. Etting was used and abused by a gangster, Marty "The Gimp" Snyder (James Cagney), who was obsessed with her. Etting was no slouch in the using department herself - she used him just as much to further her career. Cagney and Cameron Mitchell (as the pianist Etting really loves) are excellent, but Day is a revelation. If you only know her from frothy musicals like April In Paris or her later romantic comedies, you don't know the half of it. Here, she matches Cagney tooth for tooth and shows she could be as tough as any dame in Hollywood.

Oh, and American Girl just put their newest historical dolls, Marie-Grace and Cecile, on pre-order. They represent New Orleans in 1853, when a yellow fever epidemic raged in that city. Though their time period doesn't really interest me and I probably won't buy the dolls or their clothes, the dolls themselves are utterly gorgeous, especially Marie-Grace.

Meet Cecile and Marie-Grace!