Thursday, April 26, 2018

Hair Day Adventures

By the time I rolled out of bed around 8, last night's rain had been replaced by a glorious, sunny, windy spring day. I opened the windows, then enjoyed breakfast while watching two wedding-related Three Stooges shorts. They're "Three Dumb Clucks" who escape jail to rescue their father from a gold-digger. Pop just happens to look exactly like Curly without his sideburns, leading the boys to substitute him for their dad in the ceremony. Turns out the duplicitous dame is part of a gang who intends to toss Dad off a balcony and take his money...and do the same to them, if they don't fall down first!

Shemp is set to inherit money, but only if he becomes a "Brideless Groom" and gets married within a few hours. No one's interested in taking him up on the offer, until they learn about the money...and then every woman in town wants to become his wife!

First errand on the agenda was doing the laundry. Maybe I should have done it earlier than 10:30. They were really busy when I got there. I was lucky to get a washer. It had cleared out a little bit by the time my clothes went into the dryer. At any rate, I worked on story notes and half-listened to Rachel Ray and The View.

Put everything away when I got home, then made Mandarin Orange Honey Muffins from the Alton Brown Old School Muffins recipe for lunch. Did more Stooges short while I ate and baked. "Up In Daisy's Penthouse" is a Shemp-era remake of "Three Dumb Clucks." This time, Shemp plays Pop, the guys don't start out in jail, and they end up trying on their father's clothes instead of hats. The ending with the balcony remains the same, though...

Shemp also figured into "Corny Casanovas." The Stooges are thrilled that they've all gotten engaged. Turns out their fiancee is the same girl who is only interested in their rings, not them. They all fight over her, literally knocking each other out!

Headed out after lunch. My first stop was the Hair Cuttery in Collingswood. My hair very, very badly needed to be cut and styled. I put it off for almost a year again. I really need to stop doing that. My hair is long, thick, and curly, It frizzes badly, especially when it gets really long. I had Crystal again, the same nice blond lady from last year, and she once again did a great job taming my locks into a lovely shoulder-length head of curls. (I don't mind the silver strands that have been creeping in for a decade, either. Like I told Crystal, I earned every one of those silver hairs.)

After running into the Rite Aid next-door to grab creme for my curls, I headed off again, this time to the Haddon Township Library. Not only did they not have a lot going on, but they were conducting a survey, and I couldn't shelve anything anyway. I did check the DVDs to make sure they were organized and took a few out. This week's movies are Girls Trip (sounds like fun, and it got some excellent reviews last year), the late 80's comedy Betsy's Wedding, the classic 1976 concert documentary The Last Waltz, and the latest Scooby Doo direct-to-DVD movie, Scooby Doo Meets Batman: The Brave and the Bold. I also took out one of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books, Fortune's Fool, and Be a Miracle, on doing the impossible.

Made another quick stop on the way home at WaWa for milk and a pretzel before heading home. I finally got around to ordering an updated modem earlier this week. It arrived today; I carried it inside before I left. Other than it's slightly lighter and has more buttons, it's pretty much the same thing as the old one and hooks up in the same way. I even got to name my network connection and set my own password this time.

Worked on writing for a while after I got the modem working. Leia attacks Palpatine the dragon angrily after he reveals that her father once worked for him before he chose his family over power. She's strong, but the dragon's stronger. He takes off her hand, and is about to knock her off the cliff when Han and Chewie burst in, riding on Falcon. Han shoots Palpatine with his mechanical bow. He gets him in his talon, but otherwise doesn't do much damage.

Palpatine grabs Han, seeing an opportunity to use him as a hostage. Boba Fett jumps on his back, and they take off into the starry night sky, the dragon still clutching the prince in his claws. Leia manages to tell Han that she loves him and get the famous "I know" reply before Palpatine puts him to sleep and she faints from pain and exhaustion.

It was almost 7 before I broke for dinner. Ended up having a tomato, cheese, and mushroom omelet while doing two animated shorts depicting what happens after the wedding. Olive Oyl dreams she finally marries Popeye in "Wimmin are a Mystery," but their four sons prove to be more than she could handle. (The kids were later switched to being Popeye's nephews and became regulars in the 40's and early 50's.) Donald has a similar nightmare in "Donald's Diary," this time about marrying Daisy. (And interestingly, his nephews do figure into it as her brothers.)

Played a few quick Wii Sports games after dinner. Baseball went very well. I ended up tying the computer 3-3. Got my best-ever bowling score, too. Lost the tennis match, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Sometimes the computer hits way too fast for me, and I still have problems aiming properly.

Finished out the night after a shower with Scooby Doo Meets Batman: The Brave and the Bold. This story, based around the same-named cartoon from the early 2010's, takes Mystery Inc to Gotham. Impressed with their skills on a previous test case, Batman may allow them to join his group the Mystery Analysts. They get the kids to choose a case to work on...which turns out to be Batman's only unsolved case, something he's a bit cagey about. The Mystery Analysts, including Plastic Man, Black Canary, and Martian Manhunter check out a chemical warehouse that's been burglarized. A mysterious man in a red cloak almost blows them and the chemicals to smithereens, claiming that Batman made him into a ghost and he's swearing revenge. It's assumed that he has something to do with that previous case Batman had trouble with. Questioning the Riddler doesn't help. Things get even worse when Batman and the kids are accused of being the ones who stole the chemicals, and the Mystery Analysts believe the cops. Now those meddling kids have to out-run super villains and heroes alike in order to clear their names and prove that they're as good as detectives as any cape-wearing crime-fighter in the Warners roster.

Uh...yeah. This was probably a bad idea for me. I'm a fan of Scooby, but I've never been into the Caped Crusader, and I never saw the show. All of this just seemed weird and a bit incomprehensible. Unless you're a big fan of Batman or The Brave and the Bold, I'd skip this one.

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