Adventures On the Radio

Got a quick start this morning with breakfast and Bluey. Bingo is proud to bring puppet "Bob Bilby" home from school. The students are supposed to take photos of them having adventures with him and tape them in a scrapbook. At first, all they do is sit around and watch cartoons on iPads, until Bingo realizes that's not very interesting. That prompts the Heelers to head outside and make Bob's visit the best ever. Bluey, Bingo, and their friends play a "Spy Game" while their parents are at a barbecue. Bingo feels neglected and stops playing. Bluey realizes the game's not as much fun without her and coaxes her back.

Rode to work after Bluey ended. Absolutely no trouble today whatsoever. I arrived on time. It picked up slightly around 10, but otherwise, we were quiet the entire morning. It was a gorgeous, sunny, barely humid upper 80's day in August, and we're well between holidays. Most people are either still on vacation, at work, or getting ready for their kids to go back to school. I swept the store and put away cold items. Had help from 11 AM onwards from the afternoon bagger with the few carts that were around.

After I finished, I stopped at Acme's pharmacy to pick up my blood pressure medication and the antibiotics for my heel (the latter of which I forgot last week). Also grabbed a Bodyarmor drink and the strawberry and chocolate peanut butter Nature's Valley wafer bars on sale. 

Had lunch at Common Grounds Coffee House on the way home. They were busy with college kids getting ready for school, office workers doing business in a quiet place, and older ladies chatting. I had to share a table with someone else while I enjoyed my banana chip muffin, slice of tomato spinach feta quiche, and matcha latte. The muffin was nice and moist, but it didn't really taste much like banana. The quiche was really salty.

Changed, brought the trash can up, and put out the recycling when I got home, then watched Remember WENN. It's "Some Good News, Some Bad News" when Scott declares an all-news day. He couldn't have picked a worse day for it. They can't find any news to report, and Scott's attempt to make his own gets him into very hot water. Meanwhile, bubbly former stripper Maple LaMarsh (Carolee Caramello) replaces Eugenia as the station's organist for the rest of the season.

Hilary's mentor Giels Aldrych (Roddy McDowell) says "Don't Act Like That" when he tries to give the WENN staff acting lessons, only to realize how different radio and stage acting are. Scott arranges for two of his students, Enid Farleigh (Melissa Dye) and Gus Kahana (Jeff Bergman), to work there as interns. The staff rebels at first, until they realize how much the duo have to learn about radio acting.

Spent the next few hours finishing Donna Parker: Mystery at Arawak, starting The Penderwicks, and listening to old-time radio shows. The Green Hornet was a kind of less-weird variation on Batman. He too drove a sleek black car ("Black Beauty"), had a devoted young companion (his valet Kato, who is Filipino in these later episodes), and worked as a non-powered vigilante with a host of gadgets. Unlike Batman, his "real" identity was a working man, newspaper editor Britt Reid, and he tended to take on far less florid gangsters and fraudulent executives.  People saw him as a villain, which he used to his advantage to coerce crooks to turn themselves in or victims to come forward and speak out. "Paid In Full" from 1945 and "Escape to Action" from 1946 are pretty typical examples of the show. 

Started I Love a Mystery, but switched to Match Game '76 during dinner. They finished out the week with Pat Delaney, Betty White, and Orson Bean. When the wrong sign came down on set, Orson commented that he'd seen better-excuted shows at the Kiwanis Club. Later in the week, a former teacher who won big money was so excited, he did high kicks Gene Kelly would have envied.

Returned to I Love a Mystery later. I Love a Mystery is a far different example of action on the radio. Here, private eyes Jack Packard, Doc Long, and Reggie York go on bizarre adventures, taking them from vampire-filled temples to Arizona ghost towns. Alas, of the serials done for the show's original run on NBC and CBS in 1940 and its 1949 Mutual revival, only two from the Mutual series still exist in full today. 

I listened to one of those existing serials, "The Thing That Cries In the Night." The guys are hired by an old woman to protect her three daughters and drunkard son Joe. Faith is sarcastic, Hope chases the family's chauffeur, and paranoid Charity is convinced someone is out to get her and her family. She keeps hearing a wailing noise like a baby in the night and thinks it's a harbinger of death. The guys don't agree, until they see Charity get slashed, and then someone kills Joe and tries to kill their grandmother. Jack knows there's something strange going on, but he hopes he can find out, for Charity's sake, before it's too late for everyone in that household. (Keep an ear out for a young Tony Randall as Reggie.)