Billboard Top Hits 1982 (I think that makes 1984 and 1980 the only 80's entries in this series I don't have.)
Julie Andrews - Broadway - The Music of Richard Rodgers
Sea of Love: Hits of the Late 50's (3-Disc set)
The House of the Seven Gables with Vincent Price (This was one of my best finds. Universal Vault DVDs are made on demand and hard to find in the wild.)
We headed up the hill to the upper half of the shopping center next. The Pittsfield Ollie's is also new, and frankly much nicer than the one in Cherry Hill (if not as big). Lauren picked up a pack of Archway Iced Oatmeal Cookies. (Apparently, her folks are big fans of those.) I found Sunkist Thin Shortbread coconut sandwich cookies with dark chocolate cream. The book aisles yielded what was my favorite discovery of the day. TCM Underground was their late-night series discussing classic cult cinema. It ended last year, but not before they released a book of the same title on classic and lesser-known cult films.
(Among those films are five musicals I've reviewed before. I would have enjoyed the gritty Jamaican reggae crime film The Harder They Come more if I could understand the accents better. Roller Boogie and Xanadu are late 70's roller skating musicals that are way better than they have any right to be. Thank God It's Friday is a dull story with a killer soundtrack. Head is...its own thing.)
We headed into Pittsfield for our next stop. Lauren's guy friend Rico pointed out the recent opening of the Tyler St. Arcade. This is about as old school of an arcade as you can get. The newest machine was probably the SpongeBob Wheel from the late 90's-early 2000's. Most of them were generic machines from the 80's and early 90's. I did get a kick out of the Operation game where you had to hit a "bone" spot with a claw, even if it was hard to do, and the Shaquille O'Neal-themed pinball machine was pretty cool. It even used tokens and tickets instead of cards. Lauren had enough luck to get a Matchbox car, a pretty purple flower ring, and a small, squishy white bear. All I got was a pen with a video game-shaped top.
Even the cranes were filled with generic printed stuffed animals and vintage stuffed toys from the 80's they probably found at local thrift shops. I'm still having no luck with cranes. Lauren got an 80's Strawberry Shortcake rag doll.
Lauren took us further down Pittsfield for lunch. She loves Angelina's Subs next-door to the Co-Op Bank where she works. They're a small, basic sandwich shop that sells some of the best cheesesteaks and grilled sandwiches in the Berkshires. Lauren had a cheese steak, Coke Zero, and a bag of Andy Capp Cheese Fries. I had a chicken cheese steak, Fresca, and a really yummy bag of ridged sea salt and cracked pepper potato chips. And the older ladies who made the food were funny and total dolls who had worked there for years. No wonder Lauren is such a fan of this place.
Next up, Lauren took us about a half-hour down the road to the Lee Outlets. Alas, the Outlets have lost quite a few stores of late. There wasn't nearly as much to check out there as there usually is. I just ended up buying underwear at Jockey to replace a pair I bought in July that were too small. Lauren did slightly better, grabbing polo shirts at Aeropostale.
We were originally going to eat at the Lee Outlets food court, but it was only 4 PM when we finished. That was too early for dinner, especially with our late lunch. Ended up going further south to the Great Barrington Goodwill instead. Lauren found nothing here. I dug through their equally full media bins for two more multi-disc CD sets:
Original Cast! 100 Years of Musical Theater - Completing the Century (Collection of songs from musicals of the 80's and early 90's. I bought this for numbers from extremely hard-to-find flop musicals, including Dance a Little Closer, Baby, Romance/Romance, and Nick & Nora.)
Mary Poppins Special Edition (I have the original LP soundtrack, but this has all of the music, plus a second CD with bonus interviews.)
Lauren drove us all the way up to Canaan to try a restaurant Rico recommended. Picante's Mexican Grill looks extremely modern south-of-the-border in its decor, but it also has an extensive Italian menu along with the Mexican food. We had Italian yesterday, so we went with Mexican. Lauren had four small enchaladas with green tomatillo sauce, Spanish rice, black beans, and chicken that she ate all of. I went with a simpler - and equally tasty - chicken quesadilla full of thick chicken pieces and lots of cheese.
It had been spitting off and on all day. It didn't really start raining until we were heading to Picante's. The heavy shower continued during the hour-long drive home. Honestly, this may have been my favorite part of the day. Lauren turned up her 80's and 60's hits playlist, and we belted along to the Cars, the Beatles, the Chiffons, and Dexy's Midnight Runners. She spoke-texted messages to Rico, and I nearly doubled over laughing at how funny those two were together.
We showed Lauren's parents most of what we found when we got home, then went downstairs. Lauren is watching YouTube videos. I'm watching today's YouTube Match Game marathon. McLean Stevenson took over Richard Dawson's spot in the fifth seat towards the end of the 1980 syndicated season. Honestly, I think the syndicated episodes are way underrated, especially the ones with McLean. He took over as host when Charles hit Gene with a card in an argument over an answer. Ted Lange dressed McLean in a creamy white suit with a cowboy hat that made him look like he got lost on the way to the set of Dallas. He wore a blond curly wig to imitate later Police Academy cop Leslie Easterbrook. He saw a contestant with a crush on sitcom actress Sydney Greenstreet give her a pretty rose.
Have a little syndicated fun with McLean in some of the wildest episodes ever on local TV!
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