Friday, November 07, 2014

'Neath the Harvest Moon

Started out a breezy, partly cloudy morning with the 1955 Babes In Toyland. A Macy's Santa (Dave Garroway) reads a little girl the tale of two lovers in Toyland (Dennis Day and Barbara Cook) who are threatened by the evil Barnaby (Jack E. Leonard). The kindly toymaker Grumio (Wally Cox) and his huge soldier puppets come to their rescue. I'm glad more and more early TV musicals have been turning up on DVD and YouTube in recent years. It's really neat to see how they did these shows with the limitations of live broadcasting.

Work was fairly quiet when I came in. It got busy during the lunch rush hour and was off-and-on steady the rest of the evening. Other than we ran out of the turkeys for the coupons (again), there were no major problems. My relief was one of the college girls who never has any trouble being on time.

My schedule this week is surprisingly quiet. I have three days off in a row, including Veteran's Day. I'll see if I can get my Christmas shopping and organizing started early. I do have one late and long night, Thursday, but otherwise, it's not bad.

I went right into grocery shopping when I got off. I really didn't need much. I was mainly restocking baking items like brown sugar, corn starch, corn meal, and whole wheat flour. I also replaced the chicken soup I had yesterday and bought more of Poland Spring sparkling water (for a dollar this time).

When I finished, I dodged traffic and headed to the shopping center in the back for dinner. My first thought was Chick Fil'A, but their line was around the store...and that was just the one for the drive-in windows. I wasn't waiting all month for dinner. I bought pizza at Tu Se Bella's instead. They were busy too, but the line wasn't nearly as long. I took one of the smaller tables on the side of the counter as I ate one slice of regular cheese and one of cheese and tomato slices with a Diet Dr. Pepper. Waved to a co-worker and her two children on the way out.

When I got home, I ran two wartime shorts as I put everything away and got ready for a shower. It was probably inevitable that Superman would get involved with the Axis in the cartoons, given the tenor of the comic books of that time period, and there were a few during the Paramount-Famous Studios run with the character. "The Eleventh Hour" has a surprisingly dark story of Superman committing sabotage in Japan and rescuing Lois from being executed. The shadowy and beautifully done animation is unfortunately marred by some Japanese stereotypes. "Secret Agent" was the last short, and the only one to not feature Lois. Superman helps the title female agent get to Washington with some important papers about a nest of spies in Metropolis.

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