Creating Stories

Began a beautiful, sunny day with breakfast and To Tell the Truth. I got to see the first contestant, a woman who spent 20 years searching for her birth parents and wrote a book about it, The Search for Anna Fisher. The panelists' votes were all over the map; I went for upbeat number 2. Turns it out it was quiet and sensible number 3. She started a company that helps adoptees who want to find their birth parents seek them out and pushes for laws allowing adopted people to know where they come from.

Work was pretty much the same as it has been the past week - I spent it cleaning. It did help that we were quite as busy. The lines were long because we didn't have enough help, not because there were a lot of people around. There's still at least five people on leave who don't want to work during all this, and three others who are on vacation. Thankfully, I was able to avoid a lot of the trouble I had the past few days and at least got some things done, including rounding up overflowing trash in the employee room.

 Did a little writing after I got home and took out my own trash. Fannie explains that her contact at the palace gave her information about how to get to Malade and her prisoners at the ball. The others, especially Richard, want to go right away, but not only does Fannie not have an invitation, but she doesn't have a gown. Someone might recognize her as a servant...

Broke for dinner at 7. Watched Sale of the Century while eating leftovers. I think I've seen this before. The woman champ went back and forth with the sole man; both bought Instant Bargains, but the lady got the 25 dollar card on the Fame Game board and blazed through the speed round. She finally decided she wanted a lovely fur and opted to return.

Finished the night after a shower with something a little different on YouTube. From 1943 to 1947, the British Gainsborough Studio made a series of action-filled melodramas most people would regard as big-screen bodice-rippers today. The Wicked Lady was one of the most popular. Scheming Barbara Worth (Margaret Lockwood) married the handsome but dull magistrate Sir Ralph Skelton (Griffith Jones) for his money, stealing him from her doormat friend Caroline (Patricia Roc). Not only did she meet the handsome Kit (Michael Rennie) after that, but she's bored. After a spoiled debutante wins her prized broach, she dresses as a highwayman to get it back. Craving the excitement, she continues posing as a bandit, even after she meets and begins an affair with the real one (James Mason). But when one of the robberies is bungled and Barbara is forced to kill a man, it starts her off in a web of deception and death that makes her realize just how much her craving for something a little spicier in her life has cost her.

Cynical costumer is saved by a sumptuous production and by Mason and Lockwood's searing chemistry as a pair of well-dressed bandits who live for kicks and to use everyone around them. If you love dark romances or costume action movies, you'll want to check around YouTube for this one.

And I now have two more Match Game fanfic ideas. In "Murder Is Blank," Brett imagines that she's the owner of a detective agency, with Richard and Charles as her operatives, Gene as the head of the local cops, Gary Burghoff as Charles' assistant, Marcia Wallace as her secretary, Elaine Joyce as the usual mysterious blonde who asks them to find her husband, and her then-real-life husband Bobby Van as the missing hubby. It'll be played as a full-out film noir spoof, with references to other tough-guy mysteries of the 30's and 40's and to black-and-white.

"Superhero Blank" has Gene and the regulars involved in an accident on-set that leaves them with superpowers. Charles isn't sure about this, but Brett's ecstatic that she now has a great way to stick it to her (kind of) ex-husband. Richard, however, has bigger plans - they can use their powers for good and not only help people win money, but keep them safe, too. Not only is there the concern that someone might find out about their newfound abilities, but while rescuing people, the quartet stumble onto a real-life super villain who is scarier than anything in the comics that Richard and Brett's sons read...and far closer to home.