Chilled Harvest

Brrr! I awoke to 40-degree temperatures as I turned on this week's American Top 40. They stayed in the 80s but jumped back a few years to 1983. Popular songs from early November '83 included "True," by Spandau Ballet, "Say, Say, Say" by Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney (their second collaboration), "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel (which has been a favorite of mine ever since), "Delirious" by Prince, "Telephone" by Sheena Easton, and "Making Love Out of Nothing At All" by Air Supply.

That week's #1 hit was a reflection of the popularity of country music in the early 80s, as it was also that week's top country song - the duet "Islands In the Stream," by two of the 80s' favorite country music stars, Dolly Pardon and Kenny Rogers.

Other than the cold, it was sunny, windy, and a perfect day for a farm market/yard sale run. There weren't too many yard sales around this week, probably because of the chilly weather. My first stop was a sale on Merrick Avenue, near the Westmont Acme and CVS. The proprietor was annoying, with his nasal voice, dumb jokes, and attempts to make people walk away with items, whether they wanted to or not. Most of his records were singles from the 80s, but I did find a record that interested me:

Jim Croce - You Don't Mess Around With Jim

The Collingswood Farm Market was next. It was fairly busy despite the brisk weather and the distinct lack of food booths. All of the flower stands were gone, replaced by craft salespeople. The honey seller told me she's on her last week, too. I found everything on my long list that I needed, though, including mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, carrots, apple butter, spinach (for the first time since the spring), pears, little Fuji apples, the honey, cauliflower, and broccoli. I needed to do some major restocking after the weather was too messy to get to the Farm Market last week!

I made my best finds today at indoor sales. An antique store in Collingswood was having a big used book sale, with paperbacks for a dollar and hardbacks for two dollars. I bought a Rachel Ray cookbook for a Christmas present, and a Disney Wonderful World of Reading Christmas-themed hardback, a hardback copy of the Old West-set mystery Holmes on the Range, and a lovely 50s-era book of fairy tales for myself.

Rode around Collingswood for a while, looking for another yard sale. When I couldn't find it, I decided to try the thrift shop at the Logan Presbyterian Church on the corner of Market Street and the White Horse Pike in Audubon instead. They hold the thrift shop every other Saturday. I've often ridden by when they've been open, but I was usually on the way to or from a yard sale and had never tried them. With few options, I was willing to check them out today.

The thrift shop was in the basement of the pale-green house in the back of the main church. It was basically the same thing as the now-closed thrift shop in Collingswood - clothes, toys, records, videos, knick-knacks. Here, though, everything had it's own room. There was a room for clothes, a room for toys and kids' videos, and a room for everything else, including adult records, videos, and decorative items. (Like the Collingswood thrift shop, they don't have the room for furniture.)

I made my best finds here. Among their children's videos were a fourth Muppet Babies Video Storybook I'd never heard of and a copy of The Flinstone's Christmas Carol, both of which I could add onto the end of dubbed DVDs.

There were two boxes with records off to the right in the large knick-knacks room. I found some great cast albums and sountracks there:

The original cast of the 1965 Broadway musical Do I Hear a Waltz?

The soundtrack to something called 'S, Wonderful, 'S, Marvelous, 'S Gershwin - the back cover says it's a TV "Super Special" from 1971 with a great cast, including Larry Kert, Fred Astaire, Leslie Uggams, Robert Guillaume, Peter Nero, Linda Bennett, and Jack Lemmon.

The soundtrack to the original film version of Gigi

The massive 3-disc 1956 original cast album to Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella

The lady at the front table where I made my purchases said they'd be open again on November the 19th, which also happens to be the last day of the farm market. If I'm not too busy and the weather's good, I might have to try to get back there and see if they have any more great records.

Rode over to an estate sale on Wyoming Avenue in Audubon after leaving the church. When I found nothing good there, I went back up Market Street to the TreeHouse Cafe. It was almost 12:30 by then, and the coffee house/meeting place for mothers was very busy. I was lucky to find a seat! A cup of hot chocolate and very spicy turkey chili helped me warm up after riding around outside all day.

By the time I left there, it was past 1PM. Time to head home. I gave Miss Ellie my rent before I left, including a letter that stated my intention to do the raking today. Miss Ellie had a message for me on my answering machine. That wouldn't be necessary. Her grandson would be coming over in a few hours to do the raking.

Well, that left me at loose ends. Raking was my big plan for today. I opted for a walk to WaWa for a snack instead. Since it remained in the middle 40s, I threw a coat on over my thickest sweater and grabbed ear muffs and gloves. I wasn't the only one out and about, either. I saw lots of kids in strollers being pushed by bundled-up parents, joggers enjoying the fresh breeze, and teenagers in packs heading to WaWa for hot drinks. I grabbed a pretzel and a hot chai and headed home.

Spent the rest of the afternoon at my apartment, doing things online. I also finally made the first ad for my editing business. I'm going to put up ads in local libraries and coffee houses, and maybe businesses that kids might frequent, like the comic books shop. I'll work on online advertising and advertising in colleges next week, when I can drum up the courage. It took me long enough just to make a flyer!

Ran The Mikado while making shrimp, mashed acorn squash, and Curried Cauliflower for dinner. This is the 1939 British version of the 1885 Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. I figured that if I could enjoy the equally stagey 1983 Pirates of Penzance, I would get a kick out of this...and I did. American singer Kenny Baker is Nanki-Poo (ok, so the names are weird - work with me here), a minstrel who falls for pretty school maid Yum-Yum. Trouble is, she's to be married to Ko-Ko, the new Lord High Executioner, and he's under the thumb of the pretentious Pooh Bah. Nanki-Poo has his own secrets to dish out, too...and when it all comes out in the open, it may take all of Ko-Ko's skills in clowning and persuasion to keep everyone's heads on their shoulders, including his!

If you love theatrical-style musicals or Gilbert and Sullivan, this is really cute, despite all the talk about beheading and punishments. The production is gorgeous, too, with the usual bold palette of Technicolor replaced by more delicate pastel shades, and the soundstage sets looking exquisite. The D'Oyly Carte Players have a ball with the material, and Kenny Baker looks and sounds far more at ease here than he did playing ringmaster to the Marx Brothers in At the Circus.

A few caveats. First of all, this is apparently a severely truncated version of the show, slimmed down to 91 minutes. While it all moves fairly quickly (moreso than the Pirates of Penzance film), purists probably won't be thrilled with the missing scenes and songs, and the plot is hard to follow at times. There's also the matter of obvious Brits (and one American) playing Asians. Not to mention, this is not the place to come to for heavy opera. This is about as fluffy as you can get and still talk about executions.