Friday, October 27, 2017

The Weekend Before Halloween

Finished out The House of the Seven Gables after sleeping in this morning, then went right into an equally spooky Tiny Toon Adventures episode from its final season, "The Horror of Slumber Party Mountain." Babs, Fifi, and Shirley are having a slumber party in a cabin when they're seemingly attacked by a hideous creature. It turns out to be their boyfriends Buster, Hampton, and Plucky teasing them. Buster tells a ghost story to creep the guys out...but when it turns out to be true, they all have to run for their lives!

Didn't get out to running errands until around quarter after noon. First stop was the Oaklyn Library. Not only was it lunchtime, but it was too nice out for most people to want to hang around the library for long. The only other person there besides me was the librarian. I looked over the DVDs, organized a few books in the kids' area, and headed out.

I'm beginning to think that what I told Lauren back in July was true. Road work does spread like mushrooms. I had to dodge digging going on at Nicholson Road near the Wal Mart/Marshalls' entrance, and that on top of the train bridge repairs! Not to mention all the work on Kendall Boulevard. It's like no one wants anybody to get into or out of Oaklyn.

I did finally make it to the Acme long enough to get some grocery shopping done. Found two employees-only free online coupons for the generic frozen pizza and sandwich bags. I actually needed sandwich bags anyway, and the pizza would work great for dinner. Found good sponges and a container of cinnamon decorator's sugar on the clearance shelves. Restocked canned tomato sauce and diced tomatoes, a small salmon fillet and a package of ground turkey with manager's coupons, mandarin oranges, peanut butter, brown sugar, yogurt, parchment paper, skim milk, and hot dogs. Grabbed a package of larger multi-colored hair bands. The sale wasn't great, but the ones I got off the clearance rack last week were too small for my thick hair. I'll use them for the American Girl dolls.

I'm not thrilled with my schedule at all. Seems a lot of people either took their vacation time or just needed time off this week. While working 2 to 6 on Halloween means I'll have just enough time for Oaklyn's Halloween Parade....it also means I'll miss giving out candy. My next day off isn't until next Friday (though I do have Friday and Saturday off). And I'll have to miss the Eagles game, too. Lord only knows when I'll get to laundry this week. Same hours I have been getting, too...which is to say,  not enough.

Cheered myself up with a couple of animated horror or Halloween-themed shorts when I got home. Started as I put things away with the later Popeye Famous Studios shorts. It's a "Fright to the Finish" when Bluto spends his Halloween night scaring Olive out of going on a date with Popeye. Popeye proves that you don't need spinach to make a few tricks of your own. Olive's very superstitious, but her sailor man sweetheart claims "I Don't Scare"...until all those superstitions keep coming true. Popeye finally turns the tables on Bluto by giving him a scare. Olive and Popeye are "Spooky Swabs" who find themselves stranded on an ancient boat filled with ghosts who want to toss them overboard! They have to figure out how to set sail for home and get around these supernatural sailors!

Did a few more during lunch. Tom the cat is tired of being scolded for all the messes he and Jerry make. He thinks hiring himself out to "The Flying Sorceress" is a great idea...until he tries to take off on her broom.

Tom's not the only one having problems with witches and their brooms. In "Witch Crafty," Woody Woodpecker finds himself fixing the handle of a witch's magic broom. He refuses to return it to her until she pays him 50 cents for the repair. She tries very hard to retrieve it, from digging holes to going in through windows, but she still won't pay.

Mickey has a far scarier encounter with "The Mad Doctor" in the classic black-and-white short. This evil quack has dog-napped Pluto and intends to turn him into a Franken-pup! It's Mickey to the rescue...if he can survive the doctor's house of horrors.

It was past 2:30 when I hopped back on the bike and made my way back out, this time cutting across Newton Lake Park. It was an absolutely perfect day for it. The sun was out. The sky was rich and deep blue. It was warm, but not as warm as last week, probably in the lower 60's. A soft breeze ruffled the glassy green water. I made my way around few people understandably out for walks or bike rides and watched ducks play on the water. The trees are finally starting to turn colors here, soft golds and greens.

Haddon Township Library was a lot busier than the Oaklyn Library had been, probably because it was past 2:30 when I got in. I organized the kids' DVDs and searched for holds for the head librarian. Found all but two of the DVDs and all of the adult titles, but only one of the kids' books. They really need to give the kids' section more of a look. It was hard to find things over there.

I did take out a few movies this week. They didn't have either Rocky Horror Picture Show or the 1931 Dracula in, so I opted for another Tim Burton movie I hadn't seen, Nightmare Before Christmas, for Halloween weekend. Figured I'd finish off the Mission: Impossible series with Rogue Nation. (At least until I can find the third movie and the sixth comes out next year.) Heard good things about the comic mystery The Nice Guys, with Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe as tough-guy detectives who have to solve a crime together. Also grabbed the spooky-sounding Mercedes Lackey Elemental Masters story Blood Red (Little Red Riding Hood in Transylvania, basically).

Stopped at Dollar Tree after leaving the library. My original plan for Halloween was to dress as a fairy. First of all, I needed a skirt. Second, while it may warm up a little over the weekend, it's just supposed to go right back to the lower 60's by Tuesday. I saw a stack of felt cowboy hats and decided I'd wear my old corduroy vest and go as a cowgirl instead. Bought a red hat and a pack of the usual plastic cowboy accessories - spurs, a badge, a gun, a holster.

Today was the last day of Oaklyn's Final Friday Festival. Made a quick stop on West Clinton Avenue to have a look around. The lone farm stand now sold pumpkins and decorative gourds. Sarah O'Brian had kids decorating inside-out helium balloons cut to look like Pac-Man ghosts at Studio LuLoo's tables. She's shutting down Studio LuLoo in the hopes of eventually moving them to larger quarters in Gloucester County, closer to where she actually lives. I'm disappointed. I liked volunteering for them, and Gloucester is too far up the Black Horse Pike for me to ride on my bike often.

The food trucks remain too expensive for my budget.  I ended up at Common Grounds Coffee House instead. Grabbed a quick chocolate peanut butter cake pop and my favorite spicy-sweet iced tea. Gulped the ice tea as I headed around the corner and finally made my way home.

Ignored Charlie cursing outside about the trees in the back yard daring to make a mess  as I worked on my story. Snoke's boys do not get along with the girls in the slightest. While Kylo Ren does like reminiscing about growing up in the Palace with Rey, he doesn't understand how she can be so patient with learning magic, or why she doesn't want automatic power and attention. Hux is more interested in military strategy and ruling the kingdom than in Jessika's mechanics and clockworks. Shy, toadying Mitaka is baffled by Kaydel's wit and love of performing.

Broke at 7 to slide that frozen Five-Cheese Pizza in the oven for dinner. Yum. I always did like Acme's generic frozen pizza. I bought it under a previous brand name back in the early 2000's, when I was living in Wildwood. Got one to feed Keefe when he visited me once. He just about ate the whole thing himself, and that was at age 12. It made a nice meal with a spinach salad with homemade honey-apple cider vinegar dressing.

Since I was working on a Beauty and the Beast story, I did the Fairie Tale Theatre version during dinner. Here, the beauty is Susan Sarandon, who works keeping house for her father and her two spoiled, flirtatious sisters (one is Anjelica Huston). Their father comes home from meeting a ship, revealing that a Beast captured him and only let him go if he sends one of his daughters. He doesn't want any of them to leave, but Beauty does anyway. The Beast (Klaus Kinski) is kind and gentle to Beauty, but she's repulsed by attempts to propose to her every day. It takes a trip home to her family to make her realize how much he means to her...and that she's the only one who can save him when she discovers he's dying.

Tossed on The Nightmare Before Christmas as I cleaned up from dinner and went online. Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon) is the undisputed head of Halloween Town, a bizzarre, dark land filled with strange and spooky folks who love a good scare. Jack may be in charge, but he's bored with his job and looking for a change. He finds it after tumbling through a door into its antitheses, Christmas Town. He's so delighted with all the snow and presents and reindeer, he decides he wants to give it a shot and let Santa have a holiday. Turns out he really should have thought this through. As his stitched-together girlfriend Sally (Catherine O'Hara) points out, the citizens of Halloween Town have no idea what Christmas is all about, and he doesn't really know how to handle it. Meanwhile, Santa has fallen into the clutches of Ooogie Boogie (Ken Page), the resident Boogie Man who wants to take over both holidays. Now Jack's going to have to reclaim his throne...and discover that, while it can be nice to step out of the box every once in a while, it's also not a bad thing to know where our talents really lay.

I can certainly understand why this is by far Disney's most popular non-canon animated film. It's one of the most creative and unusual movies I've ever seen. The design of Halloween Town alone, with all its spirals and jagged edges and creepy creatures, is incredible. I really love the music, too. This is basically a horror operetta, with far more music than speech. Danny Elfman composed the music, including the signature favorites "What's This?" and "This Is Halloween," and performed Jack's songs. (Incidentally, while Tim Burton is usually associated with this, he only produced it, though he did develop the original idea.)

Way too spooky for little kids, but if you have older elementary schoolers on up who are horror nuts or enjoyed Burton's other work, this is one of the most original animated films out there and is a must-see around the fall and early winter holidays.

Since Nightmare is pretty short, I finished out the night with a Halloween episode of Happy Days. Ralph is having his annual Halloween party in a "Haunted" house in order to avoid an obnoxious gang. Joanie thinks they're crazy. According to local rumor, if you go in that house, you'll lose you head! Richie does go to the party in order to prove there's nothing to be scared of. When the tricks start outnumbering the treats, he's the one who finally figures out who's behind the frightening goings-on.

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