"Sailin' Away to Key Largo..."

Started a warm, sunny day with this week's American Top 40 re-run. We went back into the 80s to explore August 1982. Among the hits that week were "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell, "Take It Away," by Paul McCartney, and Toto's "Rosanna." The #1 single was the smash anthem from the third Rocky movie, "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor.

Headed out for this week's farm market/yard sale run right after the American Top 40 ended. I did very well with yard sales this week, much better than in previous weeks. That was with fewer sales, too. I ended up hitting five. I picked up two American Girl books for the 70s historical character Julie (Tells Her Story and Happy New Year) and a Magic Attic book, Alison Saves the Wedding, from a family in Oaklyn.

Came up even better at a multi-family sale at Cornwell Road in Haddon Township. The first thing I found was an American Girl Mystery Puzzles set, still in the plastic and never played with. It features four small jigsaw puzzles with Kaya, Kit, Molly, and Samantha on them, and has been discontinued for a while now. Found a cute Max & Ruby in two large boxes of stuffed animals.

Along with the puzzle set, my favorite find were five records, my first record score in ages:

Don't Shoot the Piano Player - Elton John

Two from the Rolling Stones, It's Only Rock and Roll and Goats Head Soup

Two holiday LPs, The Beach Boys Christmas Album and Merry Snoopy Christmas

The Farm Market was very busy today. It's the height of the summer harvest, and while blueberries are gone and cucumbers are fewer, there was plenty of other things to choose from. I was almost out of vegetables and definitely out of fruit, too. I ended up with carrots, blackberries, peaches, two tomatoes, an ear of corn, mushrooms, zucchini, green peppers, Cuban peppers, and the first red and yellow peppers and Gala apples of the season.

I did a lot of riding around this morning. By the time I'd explored my last yard sale in Audubon, I was dead tired. I'd had a long, busy week. My legs and feet were killing me. I rode straight home and spent the rest of the afternoon inside, doing things around the apartment and dubbing movies to DVD.

The first movie on the queue was an oddity, and the only other movie I'm dubbing that was taped for me by someone else. My best friend Lauren sent me Alice at the Palace during our shared Perfect Strangers phase around 2004-2005. This taping of a live show from the New York Shakespeare Festival in the early 80s features Meryl Streep as Alice, cavorting in a vaudevillian Wonderland where every character brings in a new music hall number, from Debbie Allen's showgirl Queen of Hearts to Mark Linn Baker's gentle mime White Knight and perpetually sobbing Russian Mock Turtle. Strange stuff, but kind of fun if you like Streep or vaudeville-style musicals.

The next two were quite different. Humphery Bogart's first major film, The Petrified Forest, and his last with his wife Lauren Bacall, Key Largo, both portray people being held in a remote location by gangsters. In Forest, Bogie is the gangster holding people at a roadside diner hostage. Poet Leslie Howard has been looking for a purpose in life, and may have found it in providing a way for hopeful young Bette Davis to flee the suffocating desert.

Key Largo moves from the desert to the famed resort town in the Florida Keys. Bogart is now the hero, a former soldier home from the war who is without prospects. He also finds a purpose when gangsters, lead by Edward G. Robinson and his alcoholic moll Claire Trevor, turn up at a hotel owned by the father of his war buddy (Lionel Barrymore) and his daughter-in-law (Lauren Bacall).

Petrified Forest is mainly notable for the duel of wits between Bogart and Howard. The noble ideals it puts forth and its staginess (it was based after a hit play) haven't dated well. Key Largo is somewhat better, even if Lauren Bacall doesn't have much to do. Bogart's battle of wills with fellow Warner gangster Edward G. Robinson is just as riveting, and Claire Trevor won an Oscar for her portrayal of the gin-soaked former singer.