And waited. And waited. She texted me earlier, saying she left at 10:30 and would be there in an hour. She still wasn't there by quarter of noon. Turns out she turned down WEST Clinton instead of EAST Clinton. Oh well. Since it's only three blocks away anyhow, I ended up meeting her in the parking lot of City Hall.
Once Amanda arrived, we finally went out to brunch at the Legacy Diner in Audubon. It's straight down the White Horse Pike with ample (and free) parking behind the building. They always do the holidays up right. Their windows were painted with festive scenes of holly and snowmen, while the bakery displays were filled with luscious cheesecakes, cakes, giant cookies, and Sesame Street cupcakes.
After we settled into our booth, we checked out the menu. Amanda went with a vegetable omelet, rye toast with butter, and extra-crispy home fries. I had two delicious coconut pineapple pancakes that were just big enough for me to eat and be pleasantly full. We bought containers of butter cookies and pecan balls from the bakery display case on our way out. I gave mine to the friend and her daughter who helped me yesterday.
Extra Space Storage is also straight down the White Horse Pike, about five minutes from Audubon in Lawnside. Once again, we went right in the back. We picked up the remaining two Christmas boxes, plus two small cardboard boxes of bathroom and first-aid supplies. (One of which got squished in moving.) She had a hard time getting the wider container with the Nativity into her car, but we finally managed to get it into the back.
(Incidentally, the Christmas bins are not going back into storage. I have three large closets with plenty of room for holiday decorations.)
I treated Amanda to lunch, so she took me out to Common Grounds for coffee and hot chocolate. We chatted away about how much she enjoys her job as a kindergarten teacher at a small private elementary school outside of Vineland, and I hate my job. I also mentioned I'm seriously considering finding something in Gloucester County. While nowhere in New Jersey is super-cheap, it's a lot more affordable than Camden County, with more condo and apartment buildings. Plus, Jessa and her husband Joe live in Deptford, and unlike Rose, they don't seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere else.
Once we got back to my rooms, we exchanged gifts. Amanda gave me a sweet Hallmark porcelain snowman ornament holding a puppy, a box of hot chocolate, and body lotion and a hand sanitizer in a cute polar bear holder from Bath and Body Works. She loved the things I gave her, especially the aluminum Hello Kitty bottle!
We had just enough time to put up the tree itself and wrap it with lights and garland before Amanda went home. Her parents worry about her, and she doesn't want to drive somewhere unfamiliar after dark. I finished the tree myself. Surprisingly, since it usually takes forever. it only took me two and a half hours. I have piles of ornaments, given to me or made for me by Mom or bought from Hallmark, yard sales, or half-price after-Christmas sales. There's beautiful, unique glass ornaments from the Winterwood Christmas Shop in Rio Grande. There's the felt ornaments Mom stitched herself in the 90's, and the beaded ornaments my cousin Samantha made a decade ago. Mom also gave me the glass Disney character ornaments for Christmas I believe in the late 2000's, and she made the wooden clothespin soldiers herself.
Watched holiday specials while I worked. Since I did The Christmas Toy yesterday, I went with Muppet Family Christmas today. Ma Bear is more than a little shocked when Fozzie turns up at her farm with most of the Muppet Show crew. She originally planned on going to Malibu for the holidays. Doc and Sprocket from Fraggle Rock are even less thrilled. They were hoping for a quiet Christmas. What they get is joyous chaos, especially after the Sesame Street gang arrives. Kermit's more worried about Piggy being stranded in a huge snowstorm.
Switched to Very Merry Christmas Songs as background music. This is an expanded DVD version of the original half-hour Very Merry Christmas Songs video from the late 80's. In addition to all of the Disneyland Chorus numbers, Bing Crosby's version of "Let It Snow," and Gene Autry's "Here Comes Santa Claus," we get more songs done to sequences from direct-to-home-media holiday films of the time, plus Bing's "White Christmas" and "As Long as It's Christmas" from Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.
Put on my own home-made copy of A Walt Disney Christmas next. This is a recording of a very old clamshell tape I made when I still had that DVD recorder. It's so old, it's the first time I saw "Santa's Workshop" and "Donald's Snow Fight" uncut. Other good shorts on that set include "On Ice" with Mickey saving Donald from going over the frozen falls and Goofy attempting ice fishing, "The Night Before Christmas," and "Mickey's Christmas Tree."
Since the DVD goes straight into it, I ended with the 1974 Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus. The story of Virginia O'Hanlon and her letter to editor Francis Church about the existence of Santa is here retold as something of a late Victorian Peanuts special. The animation is fairly similar, and there's a lot of the same voices, especially on the kids. It won an Emmy in 1974, which makes it all the more surprising that it doesn't show up often today.
Had dinner while watching Match Game PM. I already saw the first two months ago month, with Richard and Charles in the wide-brimmed hats calling themselves Your Basic Big Picture Hat Society. Producer and tough-guy Sheldon Leonard makes his first appearance on a nighttime show in the second episode, joined by Dr. Joyce Brothers and Fannie Flagg in a hands-print sweater. Richard gets to help with "__ Meter" in the Head-to-Head.
Finished up the night with game shows that ran exclusively on cable. Cable has its humble beginnings as a way to enhance TV channels in small, rural southern communities in the 1950's. It didn't really take off until the mid-late 70's, when systems were experimented with in various cities. QUBE, a cable system that allowed the viewer to make choices and interact with what's onscreen, seems to have been largely confined to Cleveland and the surrounding area. Most of their attempts at interactive shows went nowhere, but they did manage to put out Flippo's Screen Test in 1980. Honestly, this low-budget trivia show with contestants answering movie quiz questions might have worked far better without Flippo, who was incredibly annoying and didn't seem to want to be there.
By the time the bizarre Remote Control debuted on MTV in 1987, cable had gone from an expensive extra to a necessity for every household. This was MTV's first attempt at a game show and a non-music-video program period. Host Ken Ober was supposedly the biggest game show geek on the planet. He lived in his mother's basement and ran through TV and music video trivia for three people sitting in recliners. The real interest was the wacky comedy, which here included his mother shouting to her "son" from off-camera and his sleazy "father" hitting up the hostess and turning up in a contestant's chair later.
Even the lowest-budget cable channel put on at least one game show in the late 80's-early 90's. Wink Martindale, whose birthday was today, hosted The Great Getaway Game on the Travel Channel in 1990. Basically, Wink asked a series of geography and history-related questions, leading up to the chance to win multiple vacations. Interesting question, but the show, like many early cable programs, was obviously cheap and chintzy. It didn't even last a year.
Martindale had more luck with Debt on Lifetime in 1996. Here, three contestants play money and numbers trivia in order to win negative dollar amounts and get out of debt. They'd have to vote on who got the right answers, almost like a numbers-based Who, What, or Where Game. The winner would have a chance to win enough money to cover their rent. Interesting idea and lightning-fast game play, which is likely some of the main reasons the show went on to be a two-year hit.
PAX TV (now Ion Television) was created in 1998 to be a family-friendly alternative to the raunchier adult fare on cable then. Balderdash, based on the popular board game, debuted in 2004. It's a little bit like To Tell the Truth in reverse and played for comedy. Two contestants have to figure out if three comedians are lying when they reveal an outrageous factoid or piece of gossip, or if they're lying. It's really only so-so. The factoids are more bizarre than funny, and the game moves slower than molasses in January. No wonder it barely made six months.
After years of running Canadian game shows and re-runs of older programs, USA Network finally got to their first original game shows in 1994. Free 4 All is a group trivia game with two teams of three unrelated players. Frankly, it just wasn't all that exciting or distinguished. It barely made five months.
One of the big winners among cable game shows is Win Ben Stein's Money from Comedy Central. The premise here is simple - stump deadpan comedian Ben Stein and get his loot. This wasn't as easy as it sounds. For all of co-host Jimmy Kimmel's joking, the questions are frequently hard and the game-play challenging. No wonder this ran for nearly 7 years. It's a lot of fun to watch and guess along.
Play along with these pieces of cable history, whether you're getting out of debt or your parents' basement.
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