Thursday, November 02, 2017

Nice Detectives Finish First

Started a slightly sunny morning off with breakfast and The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters. I always do a few horror films and TV episodes I didn't sneak in before Halloween on the Day of the Dead, and this is one of my favorites. It's one of the best of the later Sach/Slip stories. The duo want to buy a lot owned by the Gravesons and turn it into a ball park for the local kids. The Gravesons turn out to be a family of monsters and lunatics. One mad scientist wants their brains for his gorilla; another wants them for his robot. The aunt wants to feed them to her man-eating plant. As for Francine, the vampire cousin...well, she just wants them.

I got up a little earlier to take down the Halloween decorations and put up what I have for Thanksgiving. While I appreciate Halloween a lot more now than I did as a kid, it's still not my favorite fall holiday. I love how cozy and quiet Thanksgiving is, compared to the flashier holidays that bookend it. Maybe that's why I've had a hard time finding decorations I like for it. The majority of my Thanksgiving stuff came from yard sales - a pair of wood and fabric pilgrims, a cute fabric mouse pilgrim, a really detailed turkey candle, and two cute turkey pilgrim salt and pepper shakers. The larger set of dried corn cobs were sent to me by my mother in college; the smaller ones I think came from either a yard sale or the Collingswood Farm Market. I also have two Webkinz turkeys I named Plymouth and Mayflower.

Most of my Thanksgiving decorations are paper hangings, some of them vintage pieces from the 70's and 80's. Pilgrim Snoopy and Indian Woodstock, the American Greetings pilgrim-and-Indian kids dinner table group, the beautifully detailed and colorful turkey, and the wide-eyed pilgrim girl came from yard sales. The mylar turkey is from a dollar store. I actually bought the large, detailed scenes of pilgrims and Indians working together from the Acme the year I moved here. Considering their size, I believe they may have originally been intended for classroom use.

Spent the rest of the morning working on my story. Finn brings the girls downstairs for dinner, trying to evade Leia's questions about his mysterious "Master." Turns out the "Master" is a huge, walking horned toad, a hideous, spike-covered creature...with hazel eyes that seem familiar to Leia. He speaks in a gruff, halting voice, calling himself slow and witless. Leia insists otherwise, since he did seem to be caring for the frog-youths.

Broke at 1 for lunch. Continued Scooby Doo and the Witch's Ghost, which I began as I finished the decorating. Mystery Inc. is in New England with horror novelist Ben Ravenscroft (Tim Curry) to soak in the fall color and enjoy the peace and quiet in his tiny home town. What they get when they arrive are crowds checking out a newly-unearthed pilgrim settlement and enjoying the town's Fall Festival. The mayor insists that the ghost of Sarah Ravenscroft, who was accused of witchcraft in the early 1700's, has been seen haunting the area. Ben's determined to find her diary and prove that she was a healing woman, not a witch. After eating every bit of food in the local diner, Scooby and Shaggy have a run-in with Sarah's ghost! As the gang put the clues together, they discover that the "ghost" isn't what it seems to be...and neither are Ben's claims about his ancestor's profession. And what do the goth rock group The Hex Girls have to do with it all?

While not quite as dark (or as good) as the previous Scooby Doo movie Zombie Island, this one does have its own charms, including Curry as Ravenscroft. References to Halloween and Thanksgiving and the general spooky atmosphere makes this perfect for transitioning between the fall holidays. This movie also introduced goth rocker chicks the Hex Girls. They proved to be so popular, they would make appearances in at least two more movies, as well as in episodes of What's New, Scooby Doo? and Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated.

Headed off to work around quarter of 2. Work was slightly busier than yesterday, and with less help, but still nothing overwhelming or out of line for the time of year. The only trouble happened when I tried to get on break. I had to clean up a spill, which was fine. It was soda, and not a big spill. But then they wanted me to return cold items from a huge order someone returned. I more than a half-hour late when I finally got out there. I had no help later in the afternoon. The two morning baggers went home at 3:30, and the head bagger helps put up tags for the new sales on Thursdays.

While I did clean the bathrooms and gather baskets and plastic bags, I was mostly outside. Fine by me. The weather was pretty decent. It was warm, probably a tad too warm for early November, in the lower 70's, and a bit humid, but also sunny, with a lovely breeze.

Went straight home after I finished. I mixed the last of the leftover Italian Sausage Tomato soup with a little of the black bean dip from yesterday to cut down on the spiciness of the soup a bit. Cleaned up from that, then made Dark Chocolate Chip "Old School" Muffins from Alton Brown's Old School Muffins recipe. (Overcooked them a bit, but they're still edible.)

Watched The Nice Guys as I ate and baked. The year is 1977. Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is supposed to be a private detective. While he can get the job done when he tries, he mostly just drinks himself into a stupor and stiffs his clients for more money. His smart and brave daughter Holly (Angourie Rice) is probably better at his job than he is. He gets a wake-up call when someone named Amelia (Margaret Qualley) sends an "enforcer" named Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) to break his arm and scare him off the case. Not only does it not work, but Healy decides that he'd rather be helping people than harming them and joins March trying to find Amelia. Amelia made a porn movie that a lot of people want to see destroyed, including her mother Judith (Kim Basinger), a couple of mob bosses, and half the car manufactures in Detroit. Now March, Healy, and Holly have to prove that nice folks really do finish first...and you don't have to be a killer, or even that tough, to get the job done.

It's too bad this really cute comedy was a surprise box office flop last year. Maybe a lot of people couldn't keep up with the convoluted plot, or didn't cotton to the 70's nostalgia. As someone at TV Tropes said, this was more 1977 than 1977. Special kudos to the makeup, hairstyling, and costume designers for their spot-on recreations of the fads and fashions of the late 70's. Great soundtrack too, including "Papa Was a Rolling Stone," "Dazz," "Boogie Wonderland," and my favorite Earth Wind and Fire song, "September." (They made a historical error with "Escape (The Pina Colada Song,)" though. That didn't come out until 1979.)

As good as Gosling and Crowe were as the two men with very different ideas of law enforcement, Rice pretty much walks off with the picture. Holly may only be 13, but she's probably smarter and tougher than both men put together. She's the film's true emotional heart, asking both her dad and his new friends if they're "nice guys"...and they both want to be for her.

Smoking, swearing, and the adult subject matter makes this not for kids, but adults who love mysteries, private eye tales, the late 70's, or either leading man will have a lot of fun with this.

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