A Hard Day's Stooge

 I ran Brunch With the Beatles while I wrote in my journal this morning and got dressed. The theme was "A Hard Day's Night and the Summer of '64." We mainly heard songs from "Hard Day's Night"'s soundtrack, including the title cut, "If I Fell," and "I Should Have Known Better."

By the time I was making Plum Spice Pancakes for breakfast, I'd switched to the second disc of The Three Stooges Collection Vol. 7. The headliners here are two shorts that were made in 3-D, in response to the original 50s 3-D craze. (The set even includes glasses.) "Spooks!" is a routine haunted house story that pits the Stooges against a gorilla and a mad scientist. "Pardon My Backfire", which has the Stooges working at a gas station in order to earn enough money to marry their fiancees, is slightly better.

Most of the shorts here were remakes, thanks to Columbia downsizing the shorts department. The majority of them were just ok; one, "Musty Musketeers," actually improved on the 1948 original, "Fiddlers Three," with a better overall flow and a far funnier sword fight ending that made more sense. Of the completely new episodes, my favorite was "Goof On the Roof," which proves that it takes a lot more than Three Stooges to set up one TV set without completely destroying the house.

Chatted with Mom during the 3-D shorts. She's worried about Keefe. He's doing badly on some of his Navy tests. The Nuclear department is very demanding...even more so, now that they've cut a few extra weeks off the program so they can finish before Christmas. He's not great with language arts and is having a hard time memorizing and writing paragraphs of complicated definitions.

I worked on Belle after I got off with Mom. Poor dear! Her body looks better, but there seems to be no fixing her frizzy hair, which is in even worse shape than Larry's. I tried to brush it and used detangler, but it just ended up looking even frizzier. I'll give her a Downy dunk the next time I can afford to pick up a bottle.

It was absolutely gorgeous today. The sky was sunny and blue, without a hint of haze. While it remains hot, it's not nearly as humid as it was. I just had to take a quick walk down to West Clinton Avenue. The recent rain has helped the flora, too. Gardens don't look quite as parched; I can actually see green grass amid the dry gray sticks. Stopped at Leo's Yum Yums and picked up a Lemon Yum-Yum. Not bad; it even had lemon zest pieces.

I ran a couple of cartoons related to the Olympics in honor of tonight's Closing Ceremonies as I got ready for work. Marcie and Chuck are enlisted to be their school's representatives in the Decathalon in You're the Greatest, Charlie Brown. They both have a shot at winning...if they can get past boastful Freddy Fabulous from Fremont and the familiar "Masked Marvel." Mickey Mouse takes on the marathon in Barnyard Olympics, a 1932 black-and-white short. His competition, an obnoxious cat, cheats at every turn. Mickey, however, has Minnie and Clarabelle to cheer him on to the finish line.

Work was lines-down-the-aisles busy when I arrived. By 5, the lines had thinned dramatically. I spent the last half-hour doing returns. There were no major problems, and despite the quiet later, I was in and out quickly.