Adventures On the Air

Began the morning with breakfast and Care Bears Family. Grams tells Hugs the story of "The Most Ancient Gift" to assure the boy cub that he doesn't need a fancy present for his sister. King Champ wanted to bring a priceless necklace to seal his alliance with King Brave Heart, but Beastly and Shreeky try to steal it and break their truce. Champ finally learns that it's not the price of the gift that matters, it's the love behind it when he ends up giving something very special to him. Bright Heart gets into "Ski Trouble" when he goes skiing alone, rather than wait for Champ, and Beastly and Shreeky go after him. 

Headed out to run errands on the bike after that. My first stop was PNC Bank to take out money. Went inside, used the ATM machine, went back out with no trouble.

Headed down to Westmont to check out a few stores next. Most of the Valentine's Day decorations they had at Westmont Party were cardboard hangings I really can't use right now. Had more luck at Samaritan Thrift. Picked up a sage-green mock turtleneck, a birthday card for my stepsister Jessa (whose birthday is next week), and the book The Kitchen Front, about four women competing for a co-hosting spot on a BBC radio cooking show in World War II England. 

Despite nearly an hour's worth of searching, I didn't do nearly as well across the street at Phidelity Records. I only came up with The Best of Manhattan Transfer and the original cast album for The Pajama Game. At least they were two dollars and one dollar respectively.

Headed down Haddon Avenue, dodging early rush hour traffic as I made my way to Sprouts. They were having good sales on Hint flavored water (two bottles for a dollar!) and bags of huge, sweet tangerines. Kind granola bars were buy one, get one 50 percent off. Got more Zevia soda (only three this time, as they weren't on sale) and decided I wanted to try their lemon coconut cookies. 

Made one last stop at the pretzel shop on the White Horse Pike for lunch. Once again, I went in, bought an "original" pepperoni-stuffed pretzel and a regular pretzel, and headed out.

Had lunch while finishing out the WKRP In Cincinnati disc. Andy's attempt to land the Vicky Von Vichy advertising account at the "Hotel Ocean View" gets hotter than he originally planned when he can't get the projector used for his speech to work, Herb discovers that Vicky's assistant is not what she seems, and Arthur wonders if their bartender is actually the Dayton Poisoner. 

Herb's not thrilled about jury duty, but Andy convinces him to do it while he tries to finally get some of their accounts to actually pay them. He assigns Venus to take his role as program director. The trio all learn how hard it is to walk "A Mile In My Shoes" when Herb takes charge of the jury and finds out how hard it is to be a leader, Andy either can't get their small-time accounts to pay or is conned out of it, and Venus ends up programming nothing but R&B hits. 

Since I did "Bah Humbug!" at Christmas, I skipped to another winter episode, "Baby It's Cold Inside." Johnny Fever's idea of warming up when the heat's out at the station is to down a fifth of whiskey. He ends up sharing it with Jennifer, and Mama Carlson gets more than her share...which makes both more than a little frisky.

Did some job hunting for a while, then worked on writing. Joyce attempts to run across the poppy field, but the scent is too overpowering. She finally passes out...and vaguely hear Richard and Charles attempt to lift her, then the lion, before calling for help.

Broke for dinner and Match Game '79 at 7 PM. Charles is so confident that his answer to "Seeing __" will be at the top of the Audience Match, he stands in front of the board when it's being revealed. Later, Scoey gets upset that Fannie will give a goofy answer when the contestant sorely needs the match. (For the record, she didn't. And considering I can count the amount of times Scoey matched on one hand - including this episode - he's hardly one to talk.) Brett tries to defuse the situation with a stripping routine.

Finished the night with music on Hoopla. The collections of lesser-known material from musicals and albums performed by stage stars Veresae Sarabande released on CD in the 90's seem to have migrated there. I started with Michelle Nicastro's Toonful, a collections of songs from various animated musicals. Most of them were well-known standards from Disney animated films. The reason I rented this one was for "Betty Boop," a hilarious number about the famous 30's cartoon cutie that I've never heard anywhere else. There was also a very cute medley of songs from vintage TV cartoons, including Casper the Friendly Ghost, The Flintstones, Magilla Gorilla, and Mighty Mouse.

I've had the CD version of Unsung Musicals II for almost 20 years. I originally found it at a CD store in Ocean City, and it remains my favorite of the Unsung Musicals series. The adorable "Everything In the World I Love" from a failed musical version of The Yearling and the ballad "Smashing New York Times," on most performers' desire for good reviews, from the one-night disaster A Broadway Musical are my favorites here. Other good ones include "Beyond My Wildest Dreams" from the short-lived magic show Merlin, the hilarious "That Man Is Doing His Worst to Make Good" from an even shorter-lived stage version of Carnival In Flanders, "The Memory of Tonight" from a stage musical Arthur that has yet to play the US, and the lovely title song of Roadside.