Began the morning with a very quick breakfast and Family Feud. We got to see the second half of one of the later episodes with the lollipop trees before it switched to Password Plus. This was one of the later Tom Kennedy episodes, with Marcia Wallace and a thickly bearded Bart Braverman playing. Marcia win the first round, to her shock and surprise, before we headed out.
We always start with a trip to the Abbie Road CD store on King's Highway, but Mt. Ephraim is too far to walk from East Clinton. I ended up calling Uber. No trouble here. He picked us up in 3 minutes, and we were at the front door in less than five.
Bob greeted us warmly, as he always does, and was happy to hear that we both now had good jobs and were doing better. He wasn't so thrilled with some of his other customers. I heard one guy give him a really hard time over the price of his CDs. I don't know why. Bob's always been more than generous with us. Lauren ended up with two country CDs. I found seven CDs:
Miles Davis - Love Songs
Barbara Cook - Barbara Cook at Carnegie Hall
Aerosmith - Little South of Sanity (2-disc set)
Janis Joplin - Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits
The soundtrack from Honeymoon In Vegas
Super Hits of the 70's Vol 2 (the earliest I've been able to find)
Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks - 2000 Years with Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks
And two records:
Mae West - The Fabulous Mae West
Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella (The concept album for what would be Cinderella in the UK and Bad Cinderella in the US - this is a three-disc set.)
It was such a gorgeous day, it would have been a crime not to walk down the Black Horse Pike to the Audubon Crossings Shopping Center. This was probably the nicest day we've had in at least a month. The sun was shining but not too strongly, the sky was a perfect pale robin's egg blue, and the raging gales had gentled to soft breezes. It was dry and warm, but not overly so, probably in the mid-70's. Even the abandoned storefronts and generic pharmacies and diners on the Black Horse Pike looked lovely on a day like this!
We had lunch at Futomaki, the Japanese restaurant behind the Acme in Audubon. Though Tang Asian Buffet is good, we didn't feel like stuffing our faces. The crispy salmon doused in sauce, crisp vegetables, sweet tea, and salty vegetable fried rice was just enough to eat in one sitting.
We were in and out of stores for the next hour. Neither of us found anything at Ross or Five Below. I got a pretty rose-print journal for when the purple fabric journal I'm currently using runs out at Marshalls, underwear at Lane Bryant, and two records and a DVD set at Goodwill. The DVD set was a nifty black clamshell case featuring all 7 of the Peter Sellars Pink Panther movies, plus documentaries and Pink Panther and Ant and the Aardvark cartoons.
The two records were:
The soundtrack from Somewhere In Time
The original cast album for Paul Sillis' Story Theatre (A troupe of familiar actors that include Peter Bonerz, Valerie Harper, Hamilton Camp, Melinda Dillon, Paul Sand, and Richard Schaal enact folk and fairy tales, using then-modern music from George Harrison and Bob Dylan to retell favorite stories.)
(And I should have checked the underwear more carefully when I bought it. All but one of the pairs I bought were the wrong size. They were in the drawer where the right size was. I'll return them after Lauren leaves and be more careful next time.)
Stopped at the Acme next for drinks and snacks. Kind bars are on a good sale again. She got the big oat and honey protein bars, and I got the blueberry "Kids" bars drizzled with icing. The Popwell sodas were on sale for a dollar each. I would have bought a lot more than three if I could carry them! Lauren bought energy sodas.
No wonder I was able to get those two weeks off of the Acme so easily. They were dead as a doornail when we were there. We got right into self-checkout with not a line in sight. I was even able to introduce her to the floral department manager who has been so kind to me.
We went walking again, this time strolling into Oaklyn and down Kendall and West Clinton to Common Grounds Coffee House. They were a lot busier, though we did manage to get a small wrought-iron table on the side, near the brick wall. She had a vanilla iced coffee and a raspberry chuffin - a cinnamon roll baked in a muffin pan. I had a just-sweet-enough chai latte and an iced lemon muffin that was tart and tasty. We both loved our treats, and they vanished quickly.
When we got home, I took the laundry downstairs, then pulled out The Game Show Murders, a mystery game Lauren bought online to give us something different to do at home together. The host of a popular game show (that's a parody of real-life shows and mini-games) has received a threatening letter and fears for his life. We're supposed to be the sixth contestant and play the mini-games to figure out who has it in for him. The trouble is, the mini-games involved a lot of cutting out and reading stuff online we weren't up to. We did do the second round and "grand finale," but finally decided we'd take a more detailed look tomorrow.
Put on Remember WENN next after I finally remembered to put the laundry in the dryer. Decided to start over from the beginning and show Lauren select episodes of the first two seasons before returning to where I was on the third. "On the Air" brings in sweet writer Betty Roberts, whose quick thinking saves one of WENN's soap operas and impresses erudite station manager Victor Comstock. "Klondike 9366" introduces ingenue Celia Mellon and Hilary Booth and Jeff Singer's tempestuous relationship. Victor creates talk radio when he launches a late-night call in show, but it's a bust until they're able to help a little boy in trouble.
Victor and Betty are caught between "A Rock and a Hard Place" when they have to figure out how to please two very different sponsors. Betty also learns the first of many secrets when she discovers that Ceila may have fibbed about being one of the wealthy Mellons. Patti LuPone becomes the first of three Broadway divas to appear on the show in "There But For Grace." Hilary thinks Grace Cavendish is there to steal her thunder, but she's really visiting her old flame Victor.
It was so late by then, we decided to enjoy the lovely night and get take-out. We got dinner at a very busy Crown Chicken and Gyro. She had a cheesesteak. I got my favorite fried tilapia sandwich. We both got Diet Pepsis and Crown's deliciously greasy-dry fries.
Switched to YouTube after dinner and I brought the laundry upstairs. The host tournament on the original Card Sharks was so well-received, they did a second one later in 1980 with celebrities who had done other Goodson-Todman shows. Jovial Ross Martin and bubbly Meredith MacRae were the big winners from the first week. Despite her own misgivings, grouchy Vicki Lawrence won the second week, with the ever-nervous Bill Daily right behind. Alas, thanks to several YouTube game show channels having disappeared over the past few years, the second week is almost entirely missing. Most of the first week and part of the third are still available, so at least you can see some of their hilarious dealing with the cards.
Continued to edit Land of WENN while the show was on. Betty encounters intrigue, even during the lavish ball at Bedside Manor. She finds Victor Comstock searching papers in Hilary and Jeff's office. Victor reveals that he's Britannica's contact for the Rebel Society, and she can't tell anyone. Betty promises, and Victor kisses her before sending her off.
The next arrival isn't nearly so pleasant. Pavla Nemcova traps Victor in the office, using her sugar-based black witch magic to bind him. She has every intention of forcing him to reveal his secrets...and has a vial of gooey gingerbread that'll make him talk...
Meanwhile, Betty hurries off to the lakeside, where she meets Scott. They waltz together as Scott finally reveals that yes, he is "The Leader" of the Rebel Society as well as the King of Thieves and the exiled Prince Regent. He took over Victor's role as "The Leader" when he (supposedly) died in Britannica. Scott, like Betty, has no love lost for the Shadow Realm. Not only does he remember when they invaded the first time, but their knights killed his woodsman father and stole his treasury when they wouldn't join their ranks, and the King of Darkness murdered his mother after she rejected his advances. No sooner do they kiss than Doug Thompson appears, looking for his date. Scott flees, but Betty knows their magic is bound now...
Oh, and tomorrow, we're going a bit further afield to Cherry Hill for a day of bowling and strolling around the Cherry Hill Mall area.
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