I'm All Right

Kicked off the morning with reading for Flag Day from the Colliers Harvest of Holidays. The longer pieces were a short story on Betsy Ross and how she came to make the first flag, and a really interesting story on three generations of woman flag-makers who crafted the flag that served as the inspiration for "The Star Spangled Banner." There were also several poems and the Pledge of Allegiance. 

Had breakfast and put on more Hogan's Heroes after I got out of bed. This time, my fingers grabbed disc 1, season 3, so I did "Nights In Shining Armor." The inmates of Stalag 13 discover a load of bullet-proof vests dropped by the Allies outside the base. They try to figure out how to use the arrival of a German officer to get the vests to the French Resistance, with the help of Resistance member DuBois.

Worked on writing for a while after I ate and did the dishes. They arrive at the Mad Tea Party, an untidy tea table set for 20 with mismatched chairs between a New York brownstone and a Vermont fishing shack. Orson Bean the March Hare rushes out to tell them there's no room at the table, but he's unusually alone...

Broke for a berry smoothie at 11:30. Moved back a bit on the Hogan's Heroes disc for "How to Win Friends and Influence Nazis." The prisoners hope to turn a Swedish scientist who just created an explosions formula over to the Allied side, but he's more interested in his formula than the war. Hogan introduces him to a beautiful singer at a nightclub who definitely makes him reconsider his neutrality. 

Hurried off to work after the episode ended, waving to Rose cleaning the pool as I left. Work wasn't nearly as busy or as much of a problem as yesterday. We had more than enough help, for once, to the point where I spent most of the last two hours of my shift shelving candy. There was so much help by 6 PM, I was able to leave with no complaints whatsoever. 

Went straight into Southwestern Spinach Salad and Match Game '76 after I got home and changed. Darlene, the beautiful blonde who spent a lot of her time on the show flirting with Richard, became the show's all-time champ at that point when Fannie helped her with "Blow Your __." Meanwhile, Charles made jokes about finding the key to a certain motel room in Encino.

The Match Game PM episodes was one of my favorites from the later nighttime run. Vintage kids show puppet pair Kukla and Ollie became the first non-humans to appear on Match Game that week. While Brett flirted shamelessly with them, Eva Gabor helped a very sweet and nervous contestant with "Free and __" in the Head-to-Head.

Sale of the Century started close, with everyone winning or buying something. The champ pulled ahead by the second half and won the Speed Round by a wide margin. He had a lot more problems with the Bonus Round this time, though.

Finished the night on Tubi with Caddyshack. Danny Noonan (Dennis O'Keefe) works as a caddy at an exclusive country club in Illinois. He mainly caddies for gad-about rich man Ty Webb (Chevy Chase), the son of one of the club's founders. Danny's trying to cozy up to Judge Smalls (Ted Knight), the club's other founder, who is in charge of a college scholarship for caddies. The stuffy club is shaken up by the arrival of Al Czervick (Rodney Dangerfield), a loud and colorful golfer who just hit it big and is spending as much as he can as fast as he can. He and Smalls get into a rivalry right away, swapping wagers as Czervick continually gets on Smalls' goat, culminating in the duo holding a team golf match to see who is the better golfer. Meanwhile, Danny also has a crush on Smalls' niece Lacey (Cindy Morgan), to the frustration of his Irish waitress girlfriend Maggie (Sarah Holcomb), and loopy groundskeeper Carl (Bill Murray) wages war on a particularly pesky groundhog who is decimating the courts. 

For all the problems - the story lurches from incident to incident with no real rhyme or reason, some of the jokes are incredibly dated, Murray's scenes seem to have come from a different movie entirely -  there's still a lot of comic gold to be mined here. Murray, Dangerfield, Chase, and Knight all put in career-best performances, with Dangerfield's in particularly taking him out of the clubs and into major film stardom in the early and mid-80's. Extra points for so much of the film being improvised, including almost all of Murray's dialogue. Look for a killer soundtrack too, including the smash hit "I'm All Right" by Kenny Loggins. 

Highly recommended for fans of any of the major comics, sports comedies, or the "slobs vs snobs" comedies of the early 80's. 

Oh, and the rain that threatened off and on all day thankfully waited until I was long online and chatting with Lauren to come down. It's been thundering and pouring off and on ever since. And Jodie's finally home - I heard her really sneezing a few hours ago, once for five minutes in a row.