Started off the morning with breakfast and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood in honor of Grandparents' Day. "Daniel's Grrific Grandpere" loves having fun with his grandson, including looking for shells at low tide when they can't take Grandpere's boat out. Likewise, Dan has a great time "Making Mozies With Nana" as his friend Jodi's grandmother shows them how to make banana oatmeal cookies.
Switched to Charlie and Lola as I gathered my breakfast mess. Lola insists "There Is Only One Sun, and That Is Me" in her school play based around the seasons. She's devastated when she's chosen to be a fall leaf instead and keeps insisting she'd be a better sun, until Charlie reminds her that there's great things about leaves, too.
Speaking of autumn, I took down my summer decorations and put up what I have for fall after breakfast. I did manage to find room for everything...but I couldn't find the big fall bow wreath. I must have put it in storage accidentally. Even dug up places for the two scarecrows, all the stuffed calico apples and pumpkins, and the beaded wreath.
Watched Match Game '75 as I worked. Joan Collins, years before Dynasty, and gruff comedian Scoey Mitchilll joined Patti Deustch and the regulars here. The first episode featured a story from Richard Dawson about how a woman gave him a quarter to "eradicate trench hand." This was a gag answer Richard came up with for the Audience Match "Trench __" a few weeks before when he couldn't figure out anything else to say. (Match Game 101 later revealed Richard and Gene rounded up enough money in real life to donate to the Muscular Dystropy Fund.) The second episode featured an amusing question on how a pirate captain checks for __ before giving a newcomer a handshake...and Patti Deustch doing very well with the answer.
When I put the summer and fall decoration containers away, I realized the top of one container of journals was broken, and the others were falling over. I moved them to the gap between my desk and the wall in the bedroom. Next made a list of all the musicals on DVD I own but haven't gotten to reviewing yet. Most of them were smaller films on sets or movies I dubbed off video when I still had my DVD recorder.
Watched Naughty Marietta as I worked. I go further into the first movie Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy starred in together at my Musical Dreams Movie Reviews blog.
Went downstairs to put in the laundry, then switched to You're In Love, Charlie Brown while I sewed a button back on my brown shorts. (As best I could. It's so hard to thread a needle!) Poor Charlie Brown would love to tell the Little Red Haired Girl he has a crush on her, but he's thwarted at every turn. Even worse, it's the last two days of the school year. He has to talk to her now, or he won't see her again until the fall. Lucy and her buddies make fun of his feelings, but he does get a nice surprise in the end.
Did some writing after that. Jack and Charles lead Brett into the tea party, followed by the others. It's a mess of singing animals, Betty and Allen in King and Queen of Hearts mode, and every kind of tea goody known to man. Brett has to figure out where the Red King is, before she loses her chance to grab his scepter and get home...
Broke at 6:30 to bring up the clean laundry during Let's Make a Deal. The lady in the opening segment had no luck at all, opting to take a small amount of money over what turned out to be a car. They did far better in the Big Deal of the Day. A woman in a clownish nurse costume went home with a gorgeous white fur coat.
Didn't have dinner until nearly the end of Match Game '75. The contestant is so thrilled when she wins, Gene insists she put a crack in the studio floor! In the second episode, we hear Charles and William Shatner discuss the Broadway shows they did with Julie Harris. (Shatner appeared in the hit play A Shot In the Dark; Charles did the musical Skyscraper, along with Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall.)
Finished the night online with Mystery Science Theater 3000. Mike Nelson had his first real movie session with the creepy 1962 horror movie The Brain That Wouldn't Die. Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) saves his decapitated fiancee's (Virginia Leith) life by reanimating her head and keeping it in a liquid-filled tray. She's not happy about this and tries to get him to kill her again, but he wants to find her the perfect body. He finally lures his old girlfriend Doris Powell (Adele Lamont) to his laboratory, claiming he can heal her scars...but he really wants to transfer his fiancee's head onto Doris' body. Cortner's keeping another experiment-gone-awry in the laboratory, too, never realizing that this monster could lead to his undoing...
The blood and guts are unusually heavy for a movie originally filmed in 1959. The gore and some mildly titillating footage of Cortner trying to find suitable bodies among strippers and beauty pageant contestants may be why this couldn't find a distributor until American International Pictures finally released it. For all the stiff acting and over-reliance on near-soft core footage of strippers catfighting, there's also a spooky atmosphere, some decent special effects, a surprisingly good jazz score, and the monster when he does appear in the end really is that scary.
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