Laughing Matters

I started off a warm, sun-filled April Fool's Day with a first season episode of Garfield and Friends that dealt with the importance of comedy. While Garfield befriends a lobster who was supposed to be Jon's dinner and wards off mutant guppies who are after him and Nermal, Orson Pig and the other citizens of US Acres deal with a much larger threat. Orson, Wade, and the chicks are trying to avoid Roy and his newest joke book when aliens arrive...and claim they want to take the Earth's humor to power their weapons! Orson and the others use Roy's joke books against them, but slapstick proves to be the most potent weapon of all.

My main chore today was getting the laundry done. It was very busy when I finally made it in. Today is the day after a major holiday (the last until the middle of next month); many people may have had today off. I dodged at least three families. Good thing I had a very small load anyway, since I last did my laundry on Wednesday.

It was past 2 when I got in, and I had work at 3! I quickly put my laundry away, then finished out the Faerie Tale Theatre episode "The Princess Who Never Laughed." Princess Henrietta (Ellen Barkin) is learning to be a very serious young princess. The trouble is, she's tired of dusty books and never leaving the castle and her dull royal life. She wants to dress up, wear makeup, and have fun. Her father (Howard Hesseman) is in despair of what to do with her until he suggests a "laugh-off" to find a man who will make her crack a smile. He never expected that man to be Wienerhead Waldo (Howie Mandel), a farmer who calls his pig his gag writer and teaches the uptight royal establishment an important lesson about comedy - sometimes, we get the biggest laughs from the jokes that are on us.

Work, surprisingly, wasn't all that busy tonight. I figured it would be far worse than it was - it's the beginning of the month, and if people don't have this week off, their kids do. There were a few customer problems. One older man gave me trouble when he thought his order was supposed to be $10 and it came up $11 (he counted wrong). Another older woman fussed over an Easter stuffed animal that wasn't as cheap as she thought it was. Other than that, the night went by fairly quickly, and I was in and out.

I hope everyone had a really funny April Fool's Day!