Thursday, October 01, 2015

Weathering the Rain With Pirates and Fanfic

Today was my early work day. Thankfully, it wasn't raining when I got up this morning. I got to work perfectly dry. Work was dead early on, but it picked up during the lunch rush hour as people heard the weather reports and was on and off busy thereafter. In fact, by the time of the evening rush hour, it got really crazy. We didn't have nearly enough people to handle them all. This wasn't helped by it also being the first day of the month. Thank goodness my relief was right on time. I was ready to tear out my hair.

It was showering lightly when I was home, barely enough to make me damp. It did pick up not long after I got in. It's been on and off, sometimes heavily, the rest of the night (though right now, it sounds like it's off or just a small shower).

I spent most of the evening writing. Jeff, who was supposed to meet Mackie and lead him to Maple's Buttery Inn, finds Betty and Mackie about to become food for hungry flowers! He uses his bow and arrows and his own fire magic to rescue them. He tries to flirt with Betty on the road, despite his being married, but she's too tired from their encounter with the flowers to pay him much attention.

Put on the MGM musical The Pirate as I made watercress salad with home-made Apple Cider Dressing and leftover meatloaf for dinner. Judy Garland is a young woman in the Caribbean in the 1840's who is about to be married to the fat and dull mayor of her town (Walter Sleazak). On a trip to a seaside town before her wedding, she encounters a roguish actor (Gene Kelly) who falls head-over-heels in love with her. Under hypnosis, she reveals she has a huge crush on the notorious pirate Maccoco. Kelly poses as Maccoco to win her heart and prove she has too much fire in her soul to be a simple mayor's wife.

This is a creative and colorful combination of two of Gene Kelly's specialties - the swashbuckler and the musical. Garland's best moment is her "Mack the Black" number and her "Be a Clown" finale with Kelly; I like Kelly in his "Nina" dance with the women's chorus and "The Pirate Ballet." Folks in 1948 didn't get what director Vincent Minnelli was doing at the time, making this a fair-sized flop; nowadays, it's something of a cult classic. If you love unusual musicals or pirate stories or either of the stars, this is worth looking around for.

And...as of now, it really doesn't look like Hurricane Joaquin is going to hit us that hard. They're talking about anything from a quarter of an inch to an inch, hardly the one to two inches they were fussing about yesterday. I'm from the Jersey Shore. We call that a small shower. We'll see what happens.

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