Other shorts were more worthy of the nomination. "Good Will To Men" from 1955 is the remake of the 1938 anti-war parable "Peace On Earth." A grandfather mouse explains to his mousling choir how humans kept warring until there was nothing left of them. Mice eventually found their bible and decided to give up such horrible violence. It's a harrowing and sad short, apparently the last put out by producer Fred Quimby, and likely one of the darkest made during the studio era.
"High Note" was more fun. One of the notes in "The Blue Danube" gets so drunk, the conductor note has to chase him to get him back in his proper place on the scale. It's hilarious what they manage to do with one little note! Dreamy little boy Ralph Phillips makes his first appearance in "From A to Zzzz." Bored at school, he imagines himself as everything from a cowboy to a deep-sea diver to General Douglas MacArthur. Chuck Jones had a lot of fun with Ralph's wacky imagination here. I especially love him playing around with the numbers on the blackboard!
"Nelly's Folly" was entirely new to me. A giraffe with a beautiful voice is discovered by a hunter and becomes a sensation. She quickly grows bored with fame and gets into an affair with a giraffe in the zoo. After the ensuing scandal ends her career, she finally admits she belongs in the jungle and returns home.
Watched a bit of Classic Concentration while I quickly had lunch and made a grocery list. It was worth catching the first half just to see Alex Trebek in a Santa Claus suit! He kept complaining about trying to position the beard and mustache over his actual mustache and that his belly got in the way.
Hurried off to my doctor's appointment next. On one hand, Madison and Dr. Jessica said everything besides my blood pressure is fine. My blood work and mammogram came out negative. However, my blood pressure, while not as high as two weeks ago, is still higher than it should be, and Dr. Jessica claims I have depression.
I'm not keen on taking any kind of medication at all. I don't trust chemicals. I'll take the high blood pressure if I have to, but I still see no point in taking medication for depression. I just need to find a real passion, something I can get into and work towards. I just wish I knew what that was. Maybe I'd have an easier time finding a job if I really had an idea of what I was into, or how I can turn my reading and writing and weird interests into a real career.
I also need to start getting to sleep earlier. I get so caught up online, I often stay up as late as 5 AM! I can't help it. I start reading one thing, and then I see something else that interests me, and then something else...and before I know it, it's three hours later.
I left the doctor's office feeling as low as I could. Took the long way through Collingswood to try to cheer myself up a bit. At least the traffic wasn't bad on Cuthbert, and there was no one out and about on the streets at 2:30. Had no trouble getting to the Westmont Acme, not even on Cuthbert.
There were other things I wanted to do today, so I limited the grocery shopping to the Acme today. Mostly needed yogurt and granola bars. The latter weren't on sale, but there were no good sales on the low sugar and salt bars I like. I did have online coupons for the Acme's bagged brownie cookies. Their bags of low-salt almonds and cashews weren't on sale either, but they're the cheapest I've seen bagged nuts anywhere.
Went straight home after that, then went back out for that walk Dr. Jessica recommended...and because it wasn't a bad day for one. Though it remains killer humid, it wasn't quite as warm, probably into the upper 80's. I hiked down the steps and into a quiet Newton Lake Park. Most people were coming home from work at 4:30. It wasn't much busier on the White Horse Pike as I headed down that way, or in the neighborhood. At least everything looks a lot greener now. The yards are doing much better; the gardens burst with purple, yellow, blue, and white Technicolor blooms.
After I got home, I put on Darling Lili while having an early dinner. I go further into this World War I romance with Julie Andrews as a very unlikely German spy at my Musical Dreams Movie Reviews blog.
Did some more organizing during the second half of the film. My other Amazon Day purchase was a larger CD book. The animated movies were transferred to the large silver book, and the dramas and thrillers to the smaller hot pink one. That should be the last of the DVD organizing I need to do, but I do eventually intend to move the CDs to books, too. There's too many of them for the binders.
Finished the night after a shower with jazz and soundtrack albums while working on my review. Darling Lili was far from Henry Mancini's first film score. High Time is a comedy from 1960 with Bing Crosby as a widower who returns to college at age 51 and gets more than an education from the young people there. I presumed it was a musical. It's not, but it did introduce the standard "The Second Time Around," which is really more associated with Frank Sinatra.
I'm not sure if you'd call what I have on my vintage Verve set The Essential Count Basie, but there are some good numbers here that I don't have elsewhere. "Jumping at the Woodside," "Blee Blop Blues," "April In Paris," and "All Right, Ok, You Win" are the standouts here.
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