Summertime Blues

When the alarm went off this morning, I closed my eyes, then opened them. I read a little and started writing in my journal before I saw the clock and realized it was past 9 AM, and I was supposed to be at work by 9! I was so embarrassed. I raced around, changed, ate breakfast fast as I could, and called Uber. They took 8 minutes to arrive, and there was traffic on the White Horse Pike. All of this made me more than a half-hour late. 

I could have been infinitely late, for all anyone noticed. I was really more concerned about losing money than being late. For a morning that was pretty dead, I did have to put away several items and clean up two large spills. Otherwise, I swept the store and pushed carts. It remained hot and very humid today. I made sure to drink lots of water and replace my sunscreen frequently. 

Ironically, it took me a lot less time to get home, and that was at 2 PM. The driver arrived within 4 minutes, and there was no traffic this time. Everyone must have been either down at the Shore or at home dodging the heat. 

When I got in, I changed, then watched The Scooby Doo Show. Scooby's country cousin Scooby Dum in the pork pie hat is introduced in "The Gruesome Game of the Gator Ghoul." A half-man, half-alligator is scaring customers and workers away from Ma and Pa's paddlewheel boat, where they produce fritters and soda. While Scooby reunites with goofy Dum, the others try to figure out who wants the paddlewheeler to go out of business and what they're after.

Spent the rest of the afternoon working on the inventories. Finished up all the K-Tel albums I've collected over the years...and realized that I have too many of them, particularly from the years 1977 - 1979. A lot of songs are repeated ad nauseum. I cleared out a few of those and started in on the CD collections. 

I really need to dig around for more Olympics-themed music collections. I found Barcelona Gold, based around the 1992 Barcelona Summer Games, at a long-defunct used CD store on the boardwalk in Wildwood during the summer of 2005. It has some great stuff, including favorite songs from En Vogue ("Free Your Mind"), Travis Tritt ("Texas Flyer"), and Madonna ("This Used To Be Our Playground"). I'm saving the 1988 Olympics CD with Whitney Houston I picked up last month for when this year's Olympics start.

Switched to Match Game Syndicated while eating dinner. Jon Bauman, Eva Gabor, and Arte Johnson continued through most of these episodes. A woman who does body building was the big winner, prompting Jon to show off his non-existent muscles. Arte has more trouble with "__ Guests" on the Head to Head. Charles' defending Gene when he argues with director Marc Breslow in the next episode ends with the camera pointed over his head for during the credits. Arte's not as happy to listen to the gossip from the goofy blondes on either side of him. 

Elaine Joyce, Dick Martin, and George Kennedy turned up in the last episode. Charles spent the episode joking about eating with the other patients. Dick Martin is more concerned about "Don't Talk __" in the Head-to-Head. The others are less impressed about Gene going on and on about a TV show he saw.

Finished the night with Hot Stuff on Tubi. They have a lot of random comedies from the 70's, 80's, and early 90's, some of which I never even heard of. Take this oddity from 1979. Miami police detectives Ernie (Dom DeLouise), Louise (Suzanne Pleshette), Doug (Jerry Reed), and Ramon (Luis Avalos) set up a sting in a local pawn shop to trap illegal sales. They not only end up befriending the people who keep selling everything from dogs to drugs illegally, but sell many of the things sold to them back in order to keep in business. The local mob boss doesn't like that one bit, and their captain (Ossie Davis) thinks they've lost their marbles. They finally hold a huge party to round up all the criminals, but the criminals end up helping them when the mob invades.

Considering DeLouise's only directorial effort doesn't seem to have the best reputation, I thought it was pretty cute. The four leads play beautifully off of each other, and DeLouise is actually less of a ham in his own vehicle than he is sharing the spotlight in some later comedies. The low budget shows in the fact that most of the movie is set at the pawn shop (though we do get a few glimpses of Miami in the late 70's) that makes this feel more like a long Saturday Night Live sketch than a movie at times.

If you're a fan of the leads or are looking for a unique crime comedy, this is much better than you might think from the low-budget origins and is worth checking out.