1) After listening again to an episode of You Must Remember This about Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, I stumbled across a Karloff film on ye Yewtybbe, Charlie Chan at the Opera:
And now, at the end of the day, I've watched it about three times. Because, as the Cheshire Cat said, "Then it doesn't much matter which way you go." This is one of the films that continue the stalwart, unbelievable tradition of "The show must go on even though cast members are being murdered almost before our eyes" like Phantom of the Opera, Murder at the Vanities, and . . . and other movies in which the show must go on even though cast members are being murdered almost before our eyes.
1a) Let's just say that a lot of the humor here has aged into racism. For instance, William Demarest. as an Irish-American detective, refers to Charlie Chan as Egg Foo Yung and Chop Suey, "a mystery, but a swell dish." #tedious
1b) Still, Demarest, along with Karloff and Warner Oland as Charlie Chan, had the most enduring career of anyone in the cast.
1c) And what a pleasure to see that the wardrobe mistress also played Jean Harlow's gawky, not quite as dimwitted as everyone thought maid Tina in Dinner at Eight.
1d) Among other improbabilities, the opera company has to perform the opera a second time to help solve the murder. In real life we all know that the musician's union would shut down that idea immediately. :-)
2) For Easter I got all the neighbors chocolate bunnies, and I got one for myself, too. Mine had a white ribbon around it; everyone else's was red. Imagine my surprise when I unwrapped it to discover a white chocolate bunny. Shoulda seen that one coming! My gramma used to love white chocolate, and I would surprise her sometimes with a little bag of them from the candy counter at S**r's. I am, shall we say, less fond, but retaining it to use in cooking.
3) The three things that sparked my brain this evening, after this period of complete sluggishness, were: a) a phone chat with my best friend for over half an hour, b) a call with my mother for 45 minutes, and c) the discovery that April is not just National Letter Writing Month but also National Poetry Month. I can only hope that being sparked this way means my recovery from the flu is coming soon.
BONUS: The last time I got a flu shot I was sick for two weeks (but not, as I recall, out of the office that long). So I haven't had a flu shot since then, and now I'm out of work a solid week and a bit more. So it's really a crap shoot . . .