Tales from the Thrift Store vol. 13

I think I've mentioned it on the blog probably more than a few times now, but I absolutely love the 50% off sales that Goodwill runs on the first Saturday of each month. That being said, I haven't been to one in months, and my attending the August edition wasn't looking too promising, so I just said to heck with it... and went the day before!

The participating stores open up a couple of hours early on the sale days, I think 7am is what they've said publicly, but I'm fairly certain that the one I go to opens even earlier, and no matter how hard I try, I just can't seem to get there before eight -- which means that people have been coming and going for at least an hour, and the lack of items/general disarray of everything, is usually a pretty good sign of the chaos that has occurred before my arrival.

I suppose I could try waking up earlier, but I'm already up a little before 6am on a daily basis, and don't like having to get up any sooner, save for the occasional card show. Plus, I'm terribly sluggish most mornings, so getting up and eating real quick, only to then toss on some clothes and leave, really isn't an option for me. So what's a fellow to do? Why, go the day before the sale of course!

This turned out to be a really good decision (I do make them occasionally) on my part, as the shelves were absolutely packed when I got there, they open at 9am on Fridays, so I was able to get there within minutes of the doors being opened. Having never been to this store on a non-sale day, it was a little weird to see so much stuff, especially in the toy aisle, which is decimated by the time I see it on the sale days. The highlight of the full toy aisle was an old Lego Empire State Building set in a bag for like $8, and when I say old, I mean the Legos looked like they did when I was a kid, not like the weird looking stuff that is put out these days. I didn't buy it, because a) I didn't know if it was complete, and b) the Legos looked very played with, in fact I've never seen Legos that looked so rough before. Still fun to see though, and I'm sure that somebody bought it the next day.

Anyways, if you've seen any of these posts before, then you already know which section that I headed to first... videos! Followed by DVD's, records, video games, etc.

The last couple of half-off sales that I've been to have seen me getting there only to find quite a few empty spaces on the VHS shelves, so I was rather pleased to see that the shelves were completely full on this particular Friday...

Confession time: Before getting this tape, I had never seen an episode of WKRP before! I know that it's been syndicated forever now, and I do remember it being on quite a bit during my childhood, teens, and twenties -- but as anyone who had cable during the late 80's and into the 90's knows, there was always stuff to watch, and for me, WKRP just wasn't a high priority at the time. However, now that I'm couple of years removed from having cable/satellite (and I don't do streaming), I've started to become interested in trying out some of the shows that I didn't have time for when I was younger.

I tried to watch Cloverfield for the first time last week, and big surprise, it didn't go well! I'm sure that there's a few other people out there who still haven't seen it, so I won't spoil anything, but I will say that I only made it to about the 35-minute mark, just long enough for the monster/alien to show up, and then I just couldn't do anymore (to be fair though, I was hating it after the first five minutes). I don't know if it was the intention of the filmmakers or not, but if I was supposed to hate every single human in that film, than they did a great job, because I did. I knew that I'd never be giving this one another go, so after stopping it, I went to IMDB to read some spoilers, and boy am I glad that I didn't decide to power through that last hour, because the rest of the movie sounds just as bad (if not worse) than the first half an hour. As disappointing as that was (I had been wanting to see it for a long time), I still had an hour of free time to fill, so I got up and popped in the above tape, and ended up enjoying the show, or at least the first two episodes, quite a bit -- so much so, that I'll now be on the lookout for some cheap seasons on DVD.

Oh, and one other thing, is anyone interested in a Cloverfield DVD?

Watching Gaslight on TCM used to be a yearly tradition for me, because of that, I never felt the need to look for a physical copy -- but after I cut that proverbial cord, my yearly tradition fell by the wayside, and I have since been in search of a physical copy. This is one instance where DVD might be better, but I haven't seen a cheap one of those, so VHS will have to suffice until I do.

Not much to say about this one, it was new to me, and I still haven't watched it yet. I did notice that it was released back in 1992 on my birthday, so that's something. Also, I really love screener tapes, people used to collect them, but I don't really know how strong the market is for them anymore?

And another one that I had never seen (and still haven't), but I was at least familiar with it.

How about an old documentary that was clearly made to be watched in classrooms? And you can tell that it was made for a different generation (my generation), because it hasn't been dumbed down in the least, there are no jump cuts, and there is no artificial/unnecessary drama. In other words, it was made for kids who were capable of independent thought. This was the first thing from this haul that got watched, and it did not disappoint! If you have any interest in dinosaurs, do yourself a favor, and keep an eye out for this one -- or try to find it online if that's your thing.

Finding a non-Jackie Chan martial arts film in this part of the country is not an easy task, so imagine my surprise when I found this one! Finding a Sonny Chiba picture in this part of the country is damn near impossible. And if finding one is damn near impossible, then...

... finding two is like, well, I don't know what it's like, but I probably should've stopped to buy a lottery ticket on my way home that morning.

Like the video shelves, the big spinny rack of DVD's was completely full, which by the way, was something that I hadn't encountered before, usually that rack is only half-full at best. Of course just because the rack is full, doesn't mean that there's going to be anything good in there, but thankfully this was one instance where full rack equaled good stuff!

In general I do like most submarine movies, the only problem is, they tend to bleed together, at least for me. So trying to remember what scene came from what movie can often be a rather difficult, if not impossible, task. Because of this, I can't always recall which films I've seen, and which one's I haven't, case in point, The Bedford Incident. Have I seen it? I don't remember, and probably won't until I watch it again. At least I was able to remember that I didn't already own it though, that by the way, is something that I never have trouble with.

I had seen this film a few times over the years, but had never encountered a physical copy before. If someone were to ask me, I'd say this is a good movie, but definitely not for everyone, especially if you're looking for historical accuracy. I watched it again a couple of nights ago, and after having not done so for around a decade, a couple of things stood out, things that I hadn't noticed in the past. I'm quite a bit more familiar with Merle Oberon than I was the last time I saw it, knowing what I now know, it's considerably more interesting to watch her portrayal of George Sand, because for all intensive purposes, she's playing herself... neither gal was ever going to be winning any humanitarian awards. The other thing that I noticed was that I really enjoyed some of the secondary characters, in fact they sort of make the movie for me, George Coulouris as Louis Pleyel, Howard Freeman as Kalkbrenner, and my favorite, Stephen Bekassy as Franz Liszt.

I hadn't seen this one before, but I knew that with this cast that it couldn't be bad, and as it turns out, I was right. There isn't a lot of depth to the characters, and everybody's kind of playing their typical roles, but that's okay, because that's what I'm paying to see with most of these guys.

From one ensemble cast to another! Not my favorite Sergio Leone western, but I hadn't seen it for a long time, so for less than $2 I figured I might as well give it another go -- and I'm glad I did, because I ended up enjoying it quite a bit more than the last time I saw it (15-20 years ago).

I think I did pretty well overall, obviously everything wasn't half-off, but had I waited a day, most of this stuff wouldn't have still been sitting there. And other than a brief negative interaction with a guy who didn't seem to understand the etiquette of spinny racks, I had pretty decent time -- although I did go to Hobby Lobby afterwards, and that was a complete bust, but Goodwill was... good!

With the next half-off sale being a little less than two weeks away now, I'm fairly certain that I'm going to try and go the day before again, as it doesn't hurt to see if I can duplicate the success of this last trip.


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