You can count on me

[austin_dern]

To fly to New Jersey required connecting flights. We went Southwest, for the cheaper fare, but it doesn't fly directly between Detroit and Newark. Instead we went to Chicago Midway airport, a hotel as best I know I've never seen before. It seemed like a pleasant enough spot, although we got some pretty mediocre sandwiches (technically, one sandwich and one wrap) for dinner while Happy New Year, Charlie Brown played on TV. That's one of those specials I admit I wasn't so enchanted with even though it gave the non-canonical name of the Little Red-Haired Girl as one that would be very special to me. We noticed how much filler was in there --- particularly in the Musical Chairs song, which I realized was strikingly like the Lucy Says song in Flashbeagle, that pinnacle of Peanuts Special Filler --- and one striking joke. About the only plot the special has is, Charlie Brown has to read War and Peace, and he goes to the librarian asking for alternate versions, like a movie, or a record, or a computer game, or a filmstrip. A computer game! What a bleeding-edge joke for the special.

The rest of the journey wasn't so remarkable so I'll spare remarking on it. At Newark we went to the rental car counter and they gave me a choice of cars and I picked the one with the most familiar name. It was a fit car for visiting Michiganders, as it had Florida plates. It lacked the rear-view camera of the Kia Soul I'd rented a couple weeks ago, but it also lacked someone else paying for it anyway. And it had heated seats, which we'd greatly appreciate.

Back at my new home, Meijer's is open 24 hours a day. I didn't think about it much but there aren't so many 24-hour places in my old home which aren't doughnut shops. This was important because bunny_hugger and I forgot to bring the allergy medications that would let her stay comfortably in a house with multiple cats. We kept pulling up to supermarkets that looked like they were open, including a Shop-Rite which said to use the exit door to enter between the hours of 8 pm and 6 am (or so), but, it turned out they closed at midnight, and we were well past midnight. It took some searching to find a 24-hour CVS but mercifully they had the medication.

We got to my parents' home, with the lights left on, and settled in without disturbing them before morning, or afternoon.

Trivia: The New York Metropolitan Museum was open on Sundays starting in 1891. In that year between June and December it drew 900,000 visitors, some 200,000 of them on Sundays. Source: Sunday A History Of The First Day From Babylonia To The Super Bowl, Craig Harline.

Currently Reading: Moxyland, Lauren Beukes.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

It was a fit car

..was that a subtle attempt to say it was a certain small car from Honda?

Personally. the Musical Chairs song I thought was enjoyable as a kid, and remains so; even if it is very much filler. But it's good filler; we don't need to keep everything tight to the plot, especially not in Peanuts animated special.

Also around here, most Dunkin Donuts aren't 24-hours. It's Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, certain gas stations, every third Wal-Mart, certain drive-thrus and about one diner per county.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Actually, the car was a Chevy Cruze, and I meant to check whether it might have been manufactured in Lansing, but never did. (Apparently they're made in Ohio, if Wikipedia's to be believed.)

The Peanuts special is all right, although with the wide-eyed wonder of youth off my eyes I can appreciate just why my parents seemed to be a bit bored by this one, and didn't see the need to watch the lesser-still specials. But I hadn't noticed production details like how the song, and pretty near the scene, were reused.

I didn't think of Wal-Mart, probably because it's a relatively new intruder in the Central Jersey commercial ecosystem.