A Shorts Story

It was 8:30 when I originally picked my head off of my soft pillows. I was up with Lauren until past 3:30 last night, so I put my head back on the pillows, closed my eyes, and went back to sleep. It was over two hours later when I finally opened my eyes again. It was a hot, sunny day, hotter than yesterday but still not humid. It still wasn't bad in my apartment, either.

I pre-empted the Beatles today to finish 4 for Texas, which I did while eating Blueberry-Lemon Pancakes for brunch-lunch. The four in question are Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and European bombshells Anita Ekberg and Ursula Andress. Martin and Sinatra are rival businessmen and gamblers in 1870s Galveston, Texas. Ekberg is Sinatra's lady, the head of the local bordello. Andress owns the dilapidated riverboat Martin buys and repairs with hot money. Sinatra is determined to make sure Martin's riverboat isn't a success, despite the fact that he actually likes the guy. Victor Buono is the sniveling mayor in Sinatra's pay; a young Charles Bronsonan is a heartless gunslinger determined to take out the entire crowd.

Not great, not bad. Fun for what it is. One of the last films to feature Martin and Sinatra together; they do seem to be enjoying themselves, even without the rest of the Rat Pack. The ladies are also in pretty good form, especially Andress as the riverboat owner. The story doesn't make a lot of sense, but it has some nice set pieces, including the brawl on the riverboat dock in the finale. In addition to Buono and Bronsonan, the Three Stooges (Sinatra was apparently a fan) pop up towards the end with a short but pretty cute routine with Martin and Andress.

I talked to Mom while the movie was ending. Her week after our visit had been relatively quiet. It apparently consisted of cleaning up after a very big party - putting food away or giving it away, taking down the tent, returning rented items, clearing things from the backyard. Keefe spent a lot of the time with his girl Vicki. He's going back to Charleston early tomorrow morning. I'm going to miss him. He's such a sweetheart, and Vicki and his friends are good kids, too.

I went for a walk after I finished 4 for Texas and my chat with Mom. The breeze remained, but it was a bit warmer than yesterday. I was sweating as I strolled down to Goff Avenue to admire the view. The sky was a bit hazy, but not as bad as last week; I could see the Ben Franklin Bridge clear as day from the boat launch.

Went down to the White Horse Pike to Dunkin' Donuts for a treat. I rarely get anything from there. I don't like their prices, for one thing. For another, I'm not a big fan of donuts - they're too sweet for me. High prices or not, I was surprised at the crowd there when I went in to buy a Vanilla Coolatta. Mostly older and middle-aged people sat and chatted at tables while sipping coffee and eating sandwiches. I just grabbed my Coolatta and left. The Coolattas are thicker variations on Icees and Slurpees - crushed ice drinks. They're really fancy smoothies and milkshakes, and they're also a bit too sweet, but I do buy one on occasion for the heck of it.

It was a nice day for a walk. The Oaklyn Swim Club pool opened last week; there was a pretty decent crowd of kids diving in and splashing each other. The flowers are rich and beautiful, in shades of vibrant crimson, soft lavender, deep violet, sunset orange, and velvety maroon. The trees bend over with fat green leaves. The grass is a bit crunchy, due to a fair lack of rain in the last few weeks, turning crackly shades of tan and brown.

As you can guess from all the shorts I've watched, Lauren has had a Three Stooges thing going on lately...and I've been taking another look at the fellas, too. With that in mind, I spent the rest of the afternoon watching a documentary on the Laurel and Hardy DVD set I picked up in Philadelphia last year. Added Attractions: The Short Subjects Story is an overview of short subjects in the Golden Age of Hollywood - how they began in the silent era, their rise to popularity, and how each studio handled shorts differently.

The Stooges were the big thing at their home lot Columbia. Warner's Vitaphone studios, first in Brooklyn, then in Hollywood, specialized in musicals. They did a low-key jazz piece with a lot of great musicians that many of the stars on the lot came to watch. RKO stuck with rubber-legged Leon Errol. MGM took a while to find its' verve; when it did, it came up with the Pete Smith Specialties spoofs, Robert Benchley's How To...series, the melodrama series Crime Does Not Pay, and the Patrick Fitzgerald Travelogues, with their Technicolor views of the world. Shorts specialist Hal Roach created the long-running Our Gang kids' series and did the popular shorts with Laurel & Hardy and Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts (later Patsy Kelly).

Added Attractions ended right before I went to work. Denise, the woman I replaced, said it had been steady all day. It was stead for the first hour, but by 8PM, it was so dead, I left a few minutes early.