Long Day's Journey Into Work

Began another cloudy, misty day with breakfast and Halloween Is Grinch Night. The Whos down in Whoville know that when a sour-sweet wild rolls down Mount Crumpet, that will rile the local animal population enough to drive the Grinch into town with his "paraphernalia wagon" filled with wild scares. After little Euekeriah Who gets lost in the mountains and finds the Grinch and his cart, he becomes determined to keep the green menace out of Whoville.

Headed out for my long eight-and-a-half-hour work day. It was just as boring as the last few days. I'm so glad there were three boxes of gift cards that needed to be sorted through. People were using carts to do inventory in the morning, and by the time there were more to gather, another bagger had arrived. I alternated between the gift cards, sweeping, and rounding up the carts for most of the evening, though I did do trash and recycling inside and out as well. It was misting when I went to work, and continued to mist or very lightly shower in some form on and off through late afternoon.

The most that happened all day occurred in the last ten minutes before I finished. I ran into Rose, Finley, and Khai while I was doing carts. They made a brief trip to buy juice boxes for Khai's class Halloween party tomorrow. I told them I'd see them at trick-or-treat tomorrow (provided it's not washed out).

As soon as I got home, I changed and had dinner. Switched to video to run Boo to You, Winnie the Pooh while I ate. Pooh and his friends at the Hundred Acre Woods are all ready to celebrate the spookiest Halloween ever...except for Piglet, who is as afraid of the holiday as he is everything else. Pooh says they simply won't celebrate Halloween, but Tigger and Gopher cry foul. They set out to prove to their porcine pal that Halloween is nothing to be afraid of, and end up having to save each other from what seems to be a "spookable!"

Worked on a little bit of writing after dinner. The trees surrounding Gene have no desire to let the others through to him. They throw them aside, yank them to the ground, and bind them with their roots. Brett struggles over to help...but Charles may be the only one who can soothe these savage plants...

Took a shower, then watched Ghostbusters. Peter (Bill Murray), Egon (Harold Ramis), and Ray (Dan Ackroyd) are scientists specializing in the paranormal at Columbia University. The school doesn't appreciate their lax and weird theories and tosses them out, prompting them to go into business for themselves as professional ghost hunters. They have a rough time finding work at first, until Dana  (Signourney Weaver) calls them for help. Seems she saw a monster dog in her refrigerator. Peter's smitten with the lovely cellist, but even he realizes that something's not quite right here. Suddenly, the guys go from being broke to getting so much work, they hire on Winston (Ernie Hudson) as their fourth member. Their "containment unit" is now full to bursting with restless ghosts, and is attracting unwanted attention from an unpleasant Environmental Protection Agency executive (William Atherton). The Ghostbusters are blamed when exec shuts down the containment unit and blows it sky-high, but they're the only ones who can save the city when the spirit of a Sumerian god possesses Dana and her nerdy neighbor Louis (Rick Moranis) and take over their building.

The sequel's not bad and I think the remake got a bum deal, but this is still the first Ghostbusters you'll want to check out, and probably the only one most people will need. A fast and funny script, still-amazing special effects (including the infamous giant Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man), and great performances all around make this one of the must-see horror comedies and one of the great comedies of the 1980's.

Finished the night with something I've been saving for on or near Halloween. While the 1970's Match Game never did much for the holiday besides the occasional Dracula question, the short-lived 1990 revival had a full-blown Halloween episode, complete with decorations, Charles Nelson Reilly dressed as Superman (with inflatable muscles!), Brett Somers costumed as a little girl, and a ventriloquist with a wise-cracking dragon puppet. I found at least two copies on YouTube - here's the one I thought was in better shape:

Match Game '90 Salutes Halloween

And here's even more vintage Halloween fun to tide you over until trick-or-treat. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday with your favorite sparring partner!

Disney Silly Symphonies: The Skeleton Dance
Buttons and Rusty in Which Witch Is Which?
Witch's Night Out
The Last Halloween
The Wickedest Witch
Disney's Haunted Halloween (Educational Short)
The Halloween That Almost Wasn't
Betty Boop: Betty Boop's Hallowe'en Party
Ub Iwerks at Columbia: Skeleton Frolic