Epic Lunacy

I got up in time to make a quick laundry run this morning and even have a decent cereal breakfast. The laundromat was fairly busy, with several families getting their Monday morning chores done. I saw two adorable little girls pushing their brown teddy bear around in a stroller as I pulled my small load out of the drier. It was a good thing I didn't have much to do; it got pretty crowded.

When I got home, I put everything away, then finished all the packing I can do for now. (I'll pack my toiletries, journal, and pajamas tomorrow morning.) Dubbed Blazing Saddles as I tossed together leftover ground chicken with various vegetables and a salad for lunch.

"Never give a saga an even break," runs the tag line for one of Brooks' earliest and best genre spoofs. Westerns and the fights over race and sexuality in the 60s and 70s are poked fun at here. Two corrupt politicians (Brooks and Harvey Korman) hoping to buy up land in the town of Rock Ridge hire a black man (Cleavon Little) as their sheriff. Far from driving people out of town, the intelligent and sensible Little proves instrumental to bringing the townspeople together, dragging the washed-up gunslinger the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder) away from liquor, and even romancing singer Lily Von Shtupp (an Oscar-nominated Madeline Khan). The west - and the Warners lot - isn't big enough for the two of them, but Little's determined to prove that brains really are mightier than brawn...no matter what you look like on the outside.

This is one of the wackiest satires Brooks ever did, with Jewish Indians (Brooks too) seen in flashback, Wilder so fast on the draw he doesn't have to draw to take out anything in his path, and the finale that gets so insane, it spills into a musical directed by Dom DeLouise. Actually, today, this is known for a joke it couldn't have pulled off just a few years before - the infamous reaction around the campfire to those can of beans. Brooks' musical chops show up here, too. Khan's Marlene Dietrich number spoof is a riot, and the Frankie Laine-sung title tune was also Oscar-nominated.

I ran a few related Three Stooges shorts after Saddles ended. The trio hope to find gold using Curly's metal detector in "Cactus Makes Perfect," but they end up chased by prospectors instead. "Matri-phony" moves us to ancient Rome. Emperor Octopus Grabbus is determined to wed a pretty slave whom the Stooges were hiding...but he falls even more for Curly in drag!

Headed to work after "Matri-phony" ended. Work was pretty much the same as yesterday - quiet when I came in, quiet when I left, steady but not overwhelming during rush hour. It shouldn't be really bad there again until we get closer to the Fourth of July.