Switched to Family Feud before finally getting around to making a few calls and texts I'd put off. I texted Jessa and told her I'd love to go out to dinner and thrift shops tonight or Friday night, since the weather is supposed to be lousy tomorrow night and Thursday. She agreed to go tonight. Didn't have nearly as much luck getting in touch with Sue at Abilities Solutions. They're apparently in the midst of finding me a new counselor and will call me when they have.
Spent the next few hours dressing the dolls for Valentine's Day and winter. The current Lunar New Year dress at American Girl is too fussy for laid-back Jessa, so she gets Ivy's Chinese New Year Dress. Samantha wears her dusky pink Talent Show Dress that's so authentic, it's based after a real dress from 1904 in a museum. Ariel is nice and warm in the floral pantsuit with the zipper turtleneck. It's not sandals weather, so I put the boots from the Calico Dress on under them.
Josefina is pretty and romantic in the pink and magenta floral empire-waisted dress with the lace wrap and elastic collar I picked up for her on eBay years ago. Whitney's pink poodle skirt and blouse also came from eBay; her pink sweater with the pearl trim was a yard sale find. The Sweet Spring Dress from a few years ago is short enough to pass for a knitted minidress for Barbara Jean. Felicity is ready for tea ceremony lessons in her Laced Jacket and Petticoat. Molly wishes she could have something more glamorous than her plaid School Jumper and the black strap shoes she borrowed from Samantha.
Listened to children's records while I dressed the dolls. A Golden Collection of Fairy Tales is actually something of a misnomer. Heidi is a children's book, The Owl and the Pussycat comes from a poem, and the Tortoise and the Hare is an Aesop's Fable. Jack and the Beanstalk is a severely truncated version that doesn't even give us the giant. Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the three Bears are much better, especially Little Red and her growly wolf.
The Tale Spinners for Children version of Cinderella is a slightly shortened version of the Perrault story. There's no stepmother here, only two spoiled stepsisters, and Cinderella easily forgives them in the end. If it all sounds like an English pantomime, it turns out that the Tale Spinners series originated there, under the Atlas Records label.
Beauty and the Beast and Other Stories is darker than the flat-out children's recordings, maybe because they're read by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. "Beauty" is the Villenveuve version, with the lovely lass falling for a handsome prince she keeps dreaming of and turning down the Beast's proposals. "Princess of the Glass Hill" is a male Cinderella story that's pretty close to the version on my CD set. "The Boy Who Kept a Secret" is entirely new to me. A young boy keeps his secret and won't tell anyone, not even the king, who locks him up until he does. His daughter takes pity on him and feeds him, and even helps him when the Turks invade and he's the only one who can push them back.
After I finished with the dolls, I had a quick and late lunch while watching The Five Heartbeats. I go further into this look at a fictional male R&B group of the 60's at my Musical Dreams Movie Reviews blog.
Jessa picked me up promptly at 5:30. This time, we started with dinner. I've always wanted to try the Collingswood Diner, but it's on a highway in Pennsauken that's too busy for bikes to cross. They were so quiet, we thought they were closed when we first went inside. The scent of lemon-fresh cleaner didn't help there.
Turns out, yes, they were open, but they get bigger crowds earlier in the day. Too bad. Jessa had an enormous chicken Parmesan fillet with cream of chicken soup and a giant plate of spaghetti. I had a grilled chicken BLT with fries. The grilled chicken was too dry, but the bacon was nice and crispy, and the fries were so good, Jessa snitched a few. The only other people there were a group of black men who reminded me a bit of the older Five Heartbeats near the end of the movie.
The other reason I wanted to eat at the Collingswood Diner is it's a few blocks down from 2nd Avenue Thrift Superstore, the largest non-Goodwill thrift shop in the area. This huge old building holds shelves of everything from appliances to toys and racks and racks of clothes! I don't really need clothes right now, so I dug into the books and media. Jess bought two sweaters for work. I came up with three books:
Journeys Through ADDulthood by Sari Solden
My Life On the Road by Gloria Steinem
Briar Rose by Janet Yolen
Four CDs:
The soundtracks from Rocky IV and Toy Story 2
The original cast of the 1987 revival of Anything Goes with Patti LuPone and Howard McGillin
Stevie Nicks - The Best of Stevie Nicks: Time Space
And a DVD collection of four Steve McQueen movies - Bullitt, The Cincinnati Kid, Papillion, and the original The Getaway
It was past 7:30 when we finally got out of the Thrift Superstore. We drove over to Goodwill to check that out, but they close at 7. We figured that was that, and there wouldn't be much else open by almost 8 PM. She finally drove me home.
After I got in, I finished The Five Heartbeats. Ended the night with that Anything Goes revival. This was a surprise hit in 1987 at Lincoln Center. Patti LuPone takes Ethel Merman's original role as the singer Reno Sweeney who ends up helping Wall Street broker Billy Crocker avoid the cops who think and Moonface Martin, a rather lousy gangster who wants to move up from being merely Public Enemy 13. They add a hilarious "Friendship" for Reno and Moonface, "Easy to Love" (which apparently was cut from the show during rehearsals) for Billy, "It's De-Lovely," and "Goodbye Little Dream Goodbye." This really fun revival ended up outrunning the original show, and with some great performances here, it's not hard to tell why.
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