Warm one day and cold the next, but the beauty of fall is present in each.

Time to put the lawn mower away. But it has gas! Can’t let the gas sit in the engine, or it will congeal and gum up things. I could put in some stabilizer, I suppose, but that meant a trip to the grocery store. Best to just fire it up and burn off the last few tablespoons.

Half an hour later I’m standing in the driveway holding the dead-man’s switch on, wondering when this thing is going to quit. I finally took a bungee cord and tied the switch and let it roar while I swept the leaves. It was a bright day. Not too cold. The sound of the lawn mower felt comforting and friendly, a voice from a friend who’d only recently passed . . . no, that would be terrifying. Let’s say a song from the summer that’s now a few months gone.

The snowblower sounds different. For all I know it’s the same engine, more or less, but it sounds stupider, if engine sounds can be ranked by intelligence. The lawn mower has a settled, confident sound. The snowblower sounds brash but theatrically loud, suggesting false bravado. I do not look forward to hearing it. I do not look forward to discovering it won’t start, for whatever got-durned reason.

I watched a Spanish zombie movie, which is like every other Zombie movie. Interesting because it’s Spanish, but the different cultural notes were slight. Eighth-notes at best. Everyone has iPhones and wide-screen TVs and the airport has English language signs alongside the Spanish. I find Zombie movies boring after all these years. The only reason I watch them is to judge the way IT BEGINS, which is always more terrifying than the hordes of screaming people. And to think we all lived through something like that in 2020, with that growing sense of IT BEGINS! But no one in the zombie movie ever stays home for two weeks and makes bread.

Is it possible to make a surprising zombie movie, at this point? The outbreak starts - and the authorities are able to contain it! A month later, there’s a flare up in a small, isolated part of the country - but within six hours it’s cordoned off, and the danger is over. The last hour of the movie consists of people restocking the grocery store. Or, even better, the Zombies all fall over after half an hour because whatever surging chemicals are animating them just leech out or lose their power. Flash forward six years, and everything’s back to normal. OR IS IT

Yeah, pretty much. Some corpses have Long Zombieism, but they’re stored in morgue drawers. You get used to the kicking and moaning after a while.

In high school we snuck in to a college showing of “Night of the Living Dead,” having been warned - or promised - that it was unbearably scary and disgusting. We would see things we had never thought we would see. I’ll be honest: it was terrifying. The culture was not yet saturated with hideous images of depravity and dismemberment, six-sequel torture porn, exploding heads, and so on. The sight of some madwoman gobbling a hunk of liver or some guy juggling guts in the woods made an impression. A simpler time.

What made me watch Zombie Espanol in the first place? It came up on the Amazon Prime suggestions as one of the HOTTEST MOVIES of the moment, along with one of those Thinking Person’s Sci-Fi movies with good CGI and astronauts who do not seem like astronauts at all, but conscripted baristas.

The other night I watched "The Westerner," a Gary Cooper / Walter Brennan movie that might be the western Casablanca - in the sense that it's a standard studio product, but also perfect in ways that transcend the genre. Perhaps the Nonironic Oater is the genre we're all waiting for.

We gave up looking for surviving brands a long time ago, but this one rings a bell. Perhaps I'm thinking of Helene-Curtis, maker of 10-0-5. Or am I making that up?

No, Helene Curtis was something else entirely. Googling for New Orleans and Helene pulls up lots of hurricane stories.

I've had this one sitting around for ages. And I don't have much to say. But on we press:

Our heroine:

She'd have a long and varied career.

After marrying Jack Wrather in 1947, Granville transitioned into producing with her husband on series such as Lassie (1959–1973). She also worked as a philanthropist and a businesswoman, most notably owning and operating the Disneyland Hotel and the Queen Mary in Long Beach, with her husband.

Her simple middle-class house - it's huge. Look at that staircase!

Eventually we meet a familiar face:

I’m not keen to judging the past by modern standards, except when we should, because they knew better and this was lazy, mean, and racist.

At least Mr. Best isn’t billed as “Sleep ’n’ Eat” this time. As we noted the last time he made an appearance: "Bob Hope referred to Best, as his comedic co-star in The Ghost Breakers (1940), as one of the finest talents he had ever worked with."

HA HA HA HE’S KLUXED UP

It’s generally a charming series but this stuff makes it a rotten eclair.

Oh . . . one more thing!