Halloween Harts

Started off another gloomy, foggy morning with breakfast and The Cat In the Hat Knows a Lot About That. It's "Trick or Treat," but the kids have to wait for their mothers to finish household chores. The Cat takes them to meet a spider monkey, a coconut crab, and a fruit bat to see how they do tricks for their favorite fruit treats. "King Cecil the Seahorse" is the world's best dad. He keeps his eggs in his pouch while he searches for a good place to raise them. When the Cat and the kids help him find a home, they realize that taking care of babies can be even more of an adventure than fighting a dragon. 

Worked on writing for a while after that. Brett admits that Ross is cute, but he's not Gene. He can't do voices like Gene, and he's not the comedian that Gene was. Of course, Ross comes over at that point to remind Brett that she needs to speed up on the Match-Up mini game. She's been going slow. Brett doesn't see the point to it and laments that their boss Mark Goodson's son thought it was a good idea. 

Broke for lunch a little earlier, at 1. Watched Disney's Halloween Treat while I ate. Mom taped this Disney Channel special somewhere around 1988, and I've watched it at least once almost every October since. A talking pumpkin introduces spooky classic shorts like "The Old Mill" and "Donald and the Gorilla," segments from films featuring their villains, and a sketch from the Wonderful World of Disney anthology show on the cat's contribution to horror. Wonderful World of Disney also contributes a segment that focuses wholly on villains from Disney animated films made up to that point, narrated by Hans Conried as the Magic Mirror. It ends with probably the most famous of Disney's classic spooky shorts, the Donald-Goofy-Mickey vehicle "Lonesome Ghosts" and Donald's "Trick or Treat" with his nephews. 

Headed out to work at 2. I left early because I had an appointment for my next Covid booster shot. I'm not taking chances after I spent my New Year's and the week after sick as a dog. I don't want to go through that again. I did have to wait a minute while she read over my vaccination card and got the shot ready, but once it was ready, she gave it to me in my right arm, and I was free to go. It took less than 10 minutes, and I still had plenty of time to relax before work.

As it turned out, work went almost exactly the same as it did yesterday. Rush hour made it a bit busy when I got in. By the time I finished, we were so dead, I got off the register a little early to put cold items away. No trouble whatsoever.

Went straight into dinner and Match Game '77 when I got home. Buzzr must have chickened out on showing the School Riot episode, because they jumped back to earlier in the year. Soap star Rosemary Forsyth and Broadway playwright Abe Burrows join Betty White and the others in honoring a female Army officer and helping the contestant with "Pinkie __" in the Audience Match. 

Spent the rest of the night watching vintage Halloween, horror, and thriller-themed TV show episodes online. MASH finally got to a Halloween episode in their eleventh and final season, "Trick or Treatment." The doctors swap spook stories as they help a constant flood of casualties Halloween night. Charles isn't amused...and he's even less happy with the soldier who shows up with a cue ball in his mouth (George Wendt) and the one who drove through a chicken coop (Andrew Dice Clay, and that sounds like him). Meanwhile, Hawkeye helps a malnourished soldier who can't bring himself to eat after he saw his comrades killed during a meal, and Father Mulcahy discovers that a supposedly dead soldier isn't quite gone yet.

Halloween is a lot less dire for Ricky Stratton and his friends during the third season of Silver Spoons. When "A Dark and Stormy Night" knocks out the power, Ricky's dad Edward suggests they tell their own round-robin ghost story. He and the boys finally come up with the story of three kids in 1895 who end up stranded in a haunted mansion with a beautiful lady, a really goofy mad scientist, and his extremely polite and intelligent creation. 

The Muppet Show had two guests who were associated with the horror genre. Vincent Price appeared during the first season. The erudite legend played on his sophisticated reputation by appearing in a sketch with him and Kermit interviewing (and Kermit being eaten by) a massive hungry gourmand monster and Kermit showing him that he can learn how to be a horror actor too. (The copy at Disney Plus restores a number cut from the DVD, Price singing "You've Got a Friend" with the Muppet Monsters in a crazy fright wig.) 

Alice Cooper turned up in the fourth season for a frighteningly funny story involving him trying to convince the Muppets to sell their souls. Gonzo was the only taker. Along with renditions of his hits "Welcome to My Nightmare," "School's Out," and "Superstar," we get monsters singing "Once a Year Day" and Piggy and the crew of "Pigs In Space" contracting a disease that makes them invisible. 

Johnathan and Jennifer Hart have a less spooky fall in the fifth season Hart to Hart episode "Harts and Hounds." They're in England to visit a friend and take part in a traditional fox hunt, but their friend is killed by an exploding gun before he can take part. The locals suspect his wife wasn't happy with him, but Johnathan and Jennifer have to join the hunt in order to corner her and her lover.