Headed out to work after the cartoon ended. No trouble whatsoever here. It's the middle of the week and the end of the month, we're between holidays, and no Philly teams made the basketball or hockey finals this year. I barely even had carts to gather. Even the floral department manager said she didn't have that much to do. Mostly spent the morning outside, enjoying the glorious sunshine, cool wind, and mid-70's temperatures. Clouds moved in later in the morning, but they didn't amount to much besides cooling things off even further.
Had a quick appointment with the Acme's pharmacy after work. I wanted to get an updated Covid shot. The last time I got one was late October 2022. It was long past time for an upgrade. I work around people, and I don't want to get sick or make others sick. It took a few minutes while the pharmacist checked my account to see when I last had it done. After about five minutes or so, she brought me in and gave me a shot in my left arm. Took less than ten minutes. I also grabbed pain pads for my back, which has been sore since this weekend.
Stopped at Common Grounds Coffee House on the way home for a drink. Ended up with an iced "Lavender Fog." Milky iced English breakfast tea with a hint of lavender and lemon. Ohh, yummy! Sweet and earthy and a little citrusy. I had it outside at the metal tables...and noticed that the barber shop across the street that had been there for decades closed suddenly. Apparently, they moved to Virginia, which seems kind of odd to me. There's also a "community-based boutique" replacing the make-your-own-beer store next to Phillies Phatties.
Watched Sale of the Century when I got home. I'd seen this episode before, several times. The long-running champ got a run for his money from the other gentleman. In the end, he only won because he picked up an extra $10 on the Fame Game. At this point, the bonus game was still the match-the-prize. He finally ended up with some really nice Italian leather luggage.
Let it run into The Price Is Right while I had a snack and went through everything in my rooms to see if there's anything else I want to donate tomorrow. Buzzr just started running the Bob Barker 80's episodes yesterday. While I used to love Price when I was a kid, I have fonder memories of the episodes from the late 80's-early 90's, when Rod Roddy announced and Bob had white hair. I have enjoyed seeing these too on The Barker Era, and it's nice to catch them here.
Switched to Sorrowful Jones from 1949 after I cleared a few last items out of the small closet in the front of the main room. Cheapskate Sorrowful (Bob Hope) runs a horse betting operation behind a barber shop. He's flummoxed when one of his gamblers leaves his little daughter Martha Jane (Mary Jane Saunders) as collateral and then never returns. Sorrowful's boss Big Steve (Bruce Cabot) has been using the horse Dreamy Joe to fix races. He first forces all his bookies, including Sorrowful, to pay him $1,000 for telling them, then gives Joe to Martha Jane to get the cops off his back.
Trouble is, no one expected Martha to fall hard for Dreamy Joe...or for Sorrowful and Steve's sarcastic girlfriend Gladys (Lucille Ball) to like having a kid around. Sorrowful is horrified when he learns that Steve intends to send Martha to an orphanage and kill Joe after his next race. Martha flees, but falls off a balcony and is badly hurt. The only thing that will bring her out of it is her favorite horse being nearby. Sorrowful has to save Joe, then somehow sneak a horse into a hospital without anyone thinking he's crazier than usual!
While probably not Hope's absolute best, this is at least a lot better than the two wartime comedies I watched on Monday and last week. A colorful story based on Damon Runyon's Little Miss Marker helps. So does the nifty supporting cast, including William Demarest as one of the bet takers at Sorrowful's establishment and Cabot as the menacing and accurately-named Big Steve. Lucy does get a few funny lines, mostly at Sorrowful's expense, but she'd have more to do in Fancy Pants the year after this. Still worth checking out if you love Hope or Damon Runyon's evocative tales of New York's underground citizens.
Broke for dinner and Match Game Syndicated around 6:30. Joe Santos and Donna Pescow join in for these episodes from late 1979. In the first episode, Charles tries on a plaid jacket Bill Daily gave him, despite the fact that he's bigger and taller than Bill and it badly clashed with his lime-green pants. The second has Gene joking about a contestant's dark eyebrows against his white hair and him and Bill really getting into their little music routine, to the point where Gene forgets to read the question!
Oh, and after the clouds built up all day, it did finally raiin a little around this point. It wasn't huge, and while the precipitation didn't amount to much, it was windy enough for me to briefly close my window.
Finished the night at Tubi with two comedies from 1986 about bad vacations, starting with Last Resort. Harried Chicago ad salesman George Lollar (Charles Grodin) is initially excited to take his family to tropical Club Sand during the week between Christmas and New Year's. He immediately regrets taking his family there when he discovers that the rest of the people at the resort are either high, gay, drunk, or some combination thereof. The children's camp is run like a military compound by a lazy and nasty French woman. His teen daughter (Megan Mullally) and son (Christopher Ames) basically make out with the opposite sex the whole time. His wife Sheila (Robin Pearson Rose) ingests hallucinogenic mushrooms and drinks to the point of passing out. He's the only one not having a good time...but he's also the only one who sees the real reason the club is surrounded by barbed wire...
Club Paradise is a nearly identical story with a better cast. Once again, we have a stressed Chicago worker fleeing to tropical climes and discovering that paradise isn't what it's cracked up to be. Firefighter Jack Moniker (Robin Williams) is tired of his stressful job and uses his disability insurance payout to buy property on the small Caribbean island of St. Nicholas, where he and local reggae musician Ernest Reed (real-life reggae musician Jimmy Cliff) buy a failing nightclub and build it up into a low-rent Club Med-style resort.
Among the wacky tourists they manage to attract are high-strung couple Linda (Andrea Martin) and Randy (Steve Kampmann) White, nerdy Barry Steinberg (Eugene Levy) and Barry Nye (Rick Moranis), pretty Brit Phillipa Lloyd (Twiggy), and photojournalist Terry Hamlin (Joanna Cassidy). Governor Hayes (Peter O'Toole) is content to let tourists be tourists and befriends Jack. However, a developer (Brian Doyle-Murphy) wants the island for himself and recruits Prime Minister Solomon Gundy (Adolph Caesar) and his men to drive Jack, Ernest, and the tourists off the island. Jack's not about to let paradise go that easily, but it'll take help from the locals themselves - and the Governor's people - to prove that tropical hideaways are for everyone.
Club Paradise does get some marks for a decent cast of favorite Canadian comics, actual location shooting in Jamaica and Chicago, and a nice reggae score by Cliff. Last Resort was a low-budget Roger Corman production, and it shows in the obvious cheap sets and shooting in LA, the barely-there script that's awash in annoying gay, teen, and international stereotypes, and unlikable and obnoxious characters. Frankly, the whole affair gets so ridiculous that you have to agree with Grodin at the end when he asks how anyone could enjoy this. By that time, the viewer is more than likely wondering the same thing.
Club Paradise is mildly better, but I really don't recommend either of these unless you're a huge fan of Grodin, Williams, Corman, director Harold Ramis, or any of the comics involved, or you really love the slobs vs snobs or "family on bad vacation" movies of the 80's.
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