Switched to Match Game '75 while cleaning up from breakfast. Kate Jackson, later Sabrina on the original Charlie's Angels, joins Fannie Flagg, Avery Schriber, and the regulars in the first episode for jokes about Fannie's glittery New York skyline sweater and a contestant's response to where Grandpa found Grandma's false teeth clamped onto.
The second episode takes us into arguably my favorite week of that year. Sweet and adorable Dolly Reed Martin made her debut, joining husband-and-wife pair Allen Ludden and Betty White. While Richard ogled a lovely contestant, the others made jokes about what Charles is smoking in that pipe of his ("the socks he never wears") and Allen Ludden holding his card upside-down.
Went for a short bike ride as soon as the episode ended. Wanted to make a quick run to Dollar General. Their shelves are rather bare, probably leftover from the Easter weekend rush. They had no small containers of Liquid Plumber or the Jiff low-salt natural peanut butter I like. I was able to buy sponges, sugar, and a can of mandarin oranges.
When I got home, I put everything away and went straight into scrubbing the bathroom. The bathtub was especially grimy, but the sink's bad, too. Washed the windows and glass front door as well.
Listened to Sweethearts while I worked. The Ohio Light Opera put out a series of live operetta recordings on CD in the mid-2000's, including this one. This 110-year-old Victor Herbert operetta about a lost princess who is raised as a laundress and falls for a prince is likely considered kind of cheesy nowadays. I have a soft spot for old-fashioned tales of romance and action like this, even when the story brings in a local girl who wants her own shop and is mixed up with the laundress and gets hard to follow.
Made chocolate chip cookies while Tattletales was on. Don Galloway and his wife Linda were the big winners today, barely over Jimmie Walker and his then-girlfriend Samantha and Lynda Day and Christopher Stone. Whammies hit everyone hard on Press Your Luck. The eventual winner walked away with one Whammy, money, and a weekend trip to San Francisco. The lady on Card Sharks did well on the Money Cards, only to see her luck run out when she took on a college student in a Hawaiian shirt who looked like an escapee from Revenge of the Nerds.
Worked on writing for a little while after the show ended. Richard has no trouble flirting with the beautiful female reporter who has arrived on the scene to cover the gold theft. Her name is Lee Merriweather, and she wants to interview him, not date him. Her apprentice Debralee Scott would love to date him...among other things.
Broke for dinner at 6:30. Turned the leftover ham and spinach salad into a crustless ham and spinach quiche. Vacuumed while it baked and Match Game '76 ran in the background. No clue why Buzzr skipped two episodes to the week with Gary Burghoff, Joyce Bulifant, and night-time soap star Susan Sullivan. Gene happily kissed "new kid on the block" Susan while the others made jokes about the Audience Match "Buffalo __."
Jamie Lee Curtis traded machetes for matching in a Match Game PM from 1979. The guys are about ready to join the men's softball team umpired by a pretty contestant. Later in the Audience Match, the wisecracking male contestant has less luck asking Charles and the ladies the answer to "__ Shock."
Sale of the Century was one of the closest episodes of the year. The woman bought both Instant Bargains; the other man picked up one of the Fame Games. In the end, it came down to a tie between the two guys after the Speed Round. The champ just missed it, losing to the other man. He may have been a little too speedy at the bonus round...
Finished the night on Shout! TV with Mystery Science Theater 3000. The Castle of Fu Manchu is a particularly bad horror-spy movie from 1969. Fu Manchu (Christopher Lee) claimed he wanted to turn all the world's water into ice, but he doesn't really bring that up until the end. Most of the movie has him going through a convoluted plot to kidnap a doctor and his daughter and force him to take care of a scientist who could help him with his scheme. The robots were especially fond of joking about how much Fu Manchu's daughter resembled an Asian Marlo Thomas. Scotland Yard detective Nayland Smith goes after them...and never a blander Englishman existed on this planet.
The movie has two very, very big problems, both of which Joel and the robots joked about extensively. First of all, it's suuuppper slooooowww. Other than a few short fistfights and the opening aboard a sinking ocean liner, all anyone does is talk and threaten...and both are dragged on for way too long. Second, the movie is in the dark in more than its terrible dialog and the racially insensitive casting. More than half the film takes place in dark underground caverns, or literally just in a blanked-out screen with the barest hint of an outline. I know this was probably a cheap B movie, but people do like to actually see what they're trying to watch onscreen. While I found it mildly amusing and fairly campy, Joel and the robots found it so awful, they were almost literally crying at the end.
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