Thursday, August 29, 2013

No Clowning Around

I'd just gotten up and was starting my reading when the phone rang. It was actually my sister Rose. I called her a few days ago, but she's a busy mother and lawyer, and I hadn't expected to hear from her for a while. She's been crazy with a new house and two jobs, but her law work is now done more at home than at the office. She's hoping to have some time with her son and to try more hobbies, including yoga to help her back. I wish her luck. We did yoga at Yogawood once, but we could never get our schedules together enough to do it again.

Finished out The New 3 Stooges cartoons as I ate cereal with some now-sour milk for breakfast. The Stooges must "Thimk Or Thriwm" when they're left to handle a car wash alone without their boss. They insist that "There Auto Be a Law" when Dirty Dan sabotages their entry in a car race...but it's Dan who finds himself behind when a bull butts the boys into first place! The "Tin Horn Dude" is Bo Nanza, a bank-robbing robot whose metal casing makes it tough for the Stooges to catch him.

(Incidentally, although these cartoons are very easy to find on any number of public domain sets, and there will be a full set of them released this October, I really don't recommend them to anyone but hard-core Stooges fans and fans of the limited Jay Ward/Hanna-Barbara style of animation of the 50s and 60s. They're kind of cute, but also repetitive and sometimes a bit annoying.)

Speaking of public domain sets, I also dubbed a few Disney cartoons from a video that was a part of the same series in the yellow box as my Felix the Cat and New 3 Stooges tapes from years ago. "The Spirit of '43" is a Donald Duck propaganda short from World War II. Donald has to decide between saving his money for taxes and spending it. Humphery Bear's attempts to catch a fish in his solo short "Hooked Bear" is more fun. My favorite of the trio is "Susie, the Little Blue Coupe," one of several cartoons Disney did in the 40s and 50s that told the life story of inanimate objects. (Others include "Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet" and "The Little House.") Susie is a sweet little car who goes through some major ups and downs as she moves from new car on the block to run-down used car hack to a junk yard and back again.

After trying to move the dolls' clothes to my closet in my bedroom (didn't work - not wide enough for their pewter rack), I headed out to run a few errands before work. My first stop was the Oaklyn Library. They were pretty busy, with two kids reading quietly in the children's area and almost every computer full. I organized DVDs and shelved some children's books. Stopped at WaWa on the way home for milk and a pretzel.

When I got in, I ran the Scooby Doo and the Circus Monsters DVD while having leftover chicken and Chinese beans for lunch. I skipped the first episode, a What's New Scooby Doo title I'd already seen, and went to the two older ones. "The Ghouliest Show on Earth," from the mid-80s show The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo, take Daphne, Shaggy, con artist kid Flim Flamm, and the two dogs to Dooville to meet Scooby's parents. They're surprised when no one comes to meet them. It turns out the Doos are at the Circus Fantastique. It may be their final show if Scooby and Shaggy can't save the others from an evil ringmaster! Fred and Velma join in for "Bedlam In the Big Top" from the original 1969 Scooby Doo, Where Are You? The quartet and their dog are determined to stop the Ghost Clown who is sabotaging a local circus. Once again, Daphne gets hypnotized, and the others rescue her. It's Shaggy, for once, who figures out how to put this clown out of commission.

Work was almost exactly the same as yesterday, other than being a bit busier during rush hour. We're coming up on the beginning of the month and the first major holiday weekend since early July. Things should pick up a great deal from here on in. Tonight, my relief was on time, and I was in and out with no problems.

No comments: