Headed to work after that. It wasn't bad when I came in. We're usually stone-cold dead the day after Thanksgiving. Normally, everyone is grabbing Black Friday deals in the mall behind the Acme...but Thanksgiving isn't usually this late, either. I think a lot of people may have been using early beginning of the month money. I kept getting called to put away cold items during the second half of my shift, which meant I kept falling behind on the carts.
The weather didn't help. It was sunny and breezy, if cold, when I went to work. Clouds rolled in somewhere around 11. It rained lightly off and on, but nothing that would get anyone wet, and has sprinkled lightly off and on for the rest of the day.
Needed to get some grocery shopping done today. I'm not going to get to Sprouts this weekend, so I grabbed soda and Kind granola bars. Restocked yogurt and apples. The bakery has pumpkin items on clearance, including those pumpkin pecan cookies, so I picked up that, too.
Oh, and I got my schedule at this point. In good news, I continue to have more hours. In bad news, I have a long seven-hour day next Saturday and only Tuesday and Thursday off - the head bagger took Saturday off again.
After I got in, I put on The Monkees while I got organized. "Monkees Watch Their Feet" also experiments with the format. This otherwise ordinary episode with Micky playing himself and the robot clone two aliens make of him after they bring him to their ship is played as a "documentary," complete with goofy narration by Pat Paulsen about how the aliens are causing all the trouble in the late 60's. (Incidentally, Mike only appears introducing Paulsen in the opening and closing. This is the other episode he had to drop out of when he was getting his tonsils removed.)
"The Monkees Paw" is the first of two episodes in a row based on classic plays, in this case the horror fantasy The Monkey's Paw. Mendrek the Magician (Hans Conried) sells the Monkees a monkey's paw he supposedly got off a "regular" llama in Tibet. He tells them it'll grant them three wishes, but it brings them nothing but trouble. Micky is holding it when he accidentally wishes away his voice. The others try to figure out what happened to it, then unload the monkey's paw on the nasty nightclub manager who fired all of them.
Took down the Thanksgiving and fall decorations next and put of some of the winter items. Yeah, I know we're almost a month from winter, but the high next week will be the mid-40's. Mother Nature says it's winter. I'll start putting up the Christmas stuff tomorrow after I clean. My wooden folk-art snowman with the dangling legs Mom sent years ago went out, along with a couple of winter stuffed animals like Phil the Groundhog and Marie in her little winter hat and collar and the wooden framed snowman hanging.
Listened to my new Christmas albums while I worked. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is the soundtrack of the first Rankin-Bass special...well, most of it. With the exception of "Holly Jolly Christmas," I think they're all studio recordings, not the ones heard in the actual special. "Silver and Gold" lacks Burl Ives' spoken parts (replaced in the recording by the chorus). The second side is just instrumental versions of the main songs.
R&B diva Mariah Carey's album Merry Christmas from 1994 was her fourth album, and today may actually be her best-known. It produced the massive hit holiday standard "All I Want For Christmas Is You" that continues to get heavy air play during November and December to this day. Her versions of "Baby Please Come Home" and "Oh Holy Night" also tend turn up a lot. I've thought of getting this for years, but never got to it until I found it on vinyl. I don't actually have that many solo Christmas albums, and I think the Monkees and the Beach Boys are the only rock acts (and the former made their Christmas album years after their prime).
Worked on the inventory next. I'm finally almost done with the cast albums. Did West Side Story, Wicked, the Broadway original cast of Oliver!, and The Will Rogers Follies. I'm pretty sure Wicked was a Christmas present from Lauren in 2004. I'd been dying to get it, but I couldn't find it in Cape May County and I didn't have the money to buy it online at the time. I think West Side Story was another Hamilton Mall Borders find from the late 90's-early 2000's. For some reason, I could always dig up the old Columbia cast albums on CD for a good price there. I dug up The Will Rogers Follies at the Collingswood Book Festival three years ago.
Took a quick shower, then finished out the night with leftovers and more Chuck Woolery. Lingo would be the last long-running hit he hosted in his lifetime. The original Lingo was a short-lived syndicated flop in 1987. Game Show Network gave it new life in 2002, with Woolery hosting and an elegant wood and neon set. Contestants guessed rows of words from two letters provided. If the guessed the right word, they could each choose a ball with a number to call on the "Lingo" board. If they got Lingo, they earned points. Most points got to the bonus round. Here, they had to guess words in a certain amount of time. The amount of words they got represented however many Lingo balls they were allowed to choose.
I came in for their second Christmas episode in 2003. We also got a hilarious game show host tournament, with Marc Summers and Mark L. Walhburg trampling their opponents, along with a colorful and funny Cinco Del Mayo episode. By the fourth season, the set had been upgraded into something brighter and more fun, and Chuck was joined by a judge and hostess who joked with him and checked to make sure the words used were legal. Bubbly Shandi seems to have been the best-known and most popular, from what those who watched the show during its run from 2002 to 2007 say.
Match wits and words with the King of Crosswords in this hilarious marathon!
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