Too soon?

Despite having been blogging for more than a few years now, I'm still not altogether sure about people's reading habits when it comes to blogs and holidays. Personally, I check my blogroll multiple times a day, and have been doing so for years, no matter what day it is (my normal routine is to read posts initially on my phone, then go back a few days later when I'm on the laptop and comment where I can). Others are different though, I just don't know how different. Take Thanksgiving for example. I wouldn't expect a lot of people to be reading blogs on Thanksgiving day itself, but I don't know why they couldn't the day before, the day after, or in this posts case, two days after!

Is two days after Thanksgiving too soon for a post? What if it's a long and rambly post? I hope that you answered no to both of those questions, especially the latter, because I think I'm about to embark on just such a post. Oh, and speaking of Thanksgiving, and hope, I hope everyone who celebrated had a nice time. My mom and I will be doing something later this week, which will mark the first time we've done anything for the holiday in about a decade. With no other family members around, it doesn't usually make a lot of sense to go all out for just two people. We did however plan on doing something this year, but she's been doing a lot of volunteering, and that's pushed our "celebration" back a little. No big deal though, a few days later won't affect the spirit of the thing. It was raining here on Thursday, so I spent my Thanksgiving afternoon sorting cards for the first time in a couple of months. It was kind of nice to be putting stuff in binders again, but it did feel a bit weird to be home and spend the majority of the afternoon just lollygagging about inside. I don't think anyone came to hear about card sorting though, no, you came to hear about a bunch of crap that I got at McKay's (heaven for lovers of all things physical media) last Saturday -- that is unless you hit that back button real quick!

I told myself that I wasn't going to make any more trips to Knoxville on the weekends, what with all of the people out and all, and even more so given the current time of the year, but I've going through McKay's withdrawal and last Saturday was the only day that was looking like it would be possible to go in the next couple of weeks. Oh, and there was a LOT of people out that day. Too many people. Too many hectic people! People are always more crazy during November and December, and I can't imagine that it's all because of the holidays, but I don't know what else could cause such irrational behavior every year at this time? It's funny too, because this is the time of the year that I feel the least amount of stress. Although with heavy crowds everywhere, the old social anxiety will often start kicking in if I'm at a heavily populated place for too long. It got going during this trip, but thankfully waited until I was basically done to cause me any sort of discomfort. I don't think anyone cares about any of this either, so here's some stuff that you may or may not find interesting...

Sports books haven't been very high on my list of things to look for this year. I think I had only read 2-3 up until this past week, with Jeff's book being by far the best of those. I haven't even walked down the sports aisle at McKay's since earlier this year, partly due to my lack of interest at the moment, and because of that aisle is always so crowded. I can't remember what's across from the sports section, but whatever is usually draws a lot of people, and with the narrow aisles there, it gets packed rather easily. 

I recently saw a baseball book mentioned on another blog that I wanted to look for this time. I didn't end up finding a copy of that book, but did find a few more, including Glory, which I've been meaning to read for years now. I just finished yesterday, and now understand what all of the hype has been about. Great book! Hard to put down though. I would've liked to have heard more from Stanley Coveleski, but a few other more talkative guys made up for it, especially Sam Crawford. He seems like he was very interesting person, and still full of life all the way until the end. I know that most people reading this post have already read the book, but if by chance there's anyone who hasn't, go get a copy, preferably the revised edition (it has a few new interviews), you won't regret it.

Always a popular subject on the card blogs, or at least it used to be.

I can't say that I've ever seen jock straps mentioned on the front of a dust jacket before. This one should be fun!

"Did you know?" books can often be hit-or-miss with me, but for under two bucks a pop, I'm usually willing to give them a try. At best, they'll produce at least a few interesting anecdotes, and at worse, they make for a good palate cleanser in-between two longer works of fiction.

I have one more baseball book further down in the post, but for the moment, let's move on to some other stuff...

I got the first book in this trilogy last month when I was there, it was even better than I had hoped. Assuming that the second book will be good as well, I'm hoping that I'll be able to complete the trilogy next month when I go back.

What's worse than actually spending an hour and a half of your life on earth to watch the straight-to-DVD flick, Dinocroc? Uh, spending however much time it takes to read it's novelization, of course! All joking aside, I really love McKay's TV/Movie tie-in section, especially the paperbacks. One never knows what one might find, this book being a perfect example; I didn't even know that it existed, but once I saw it, I knew that I needed it in my life. I read this before Glory, and it really wasn't too bad for what it is. I haven't seen the film, but I'd have to imagine that the book was better, they usually are if only because the written version usually allows for characters to be fleshed out a little more.

I'm hoping that most people are already familiar with Close Encounters, hence my not taking a photo of the synopsis. At 75¢, this was a no-brainer. There were a few more 70's novelizations than usual this time, but this is the only one that appealed to me. 

Some of the other book sections that I frequent were a tad on the depleted side this time, but I think I acquired enough reading material until next month though. Moving on...

As a whole, the bargain ($1.95 or less) DVD/Blu-Ray section isn't as good as it was a few years ago. Don't get me wrong though, there's still thousands of titles to choose from, it just seems like the quality of said titles has gone down some. I still look, just not as thoroughly as I used to.

As far as 90's animated series' featuring superheroes go, X-Men, Batman, and Spider-Man always get brought up when a discussion turns to such things, and rightly so, they were all very good, but there was another one that people seem to forget, or just don't know about, Superman! Aside from a handful of episodes, this was an excellent series, and deserves much more nostalgic love than it's gotten up to this point. Crisp animation, fun monsters and villains, a couple of edgier storylines (Superman even kills Lex Luthor in a parallel universe!); what more could you ask for? I've been meaning to get this series on DVD for years, but have just never found it cheap. I would've preferred to get it in it's entirety, but this first volume was cheap enough that I guess I'll just go the volumes route.

I never thought it would happen to me, but at some point in last decade or so, I stopped paying attention to the latest film and television news, and as such, almost never find out about things until after they've already been out for a couple of years. I think it happened somewhere around the time that all of these streaming services started to get big. They just produce so much garbage (and that's what is), that it makes extremely difficult to weed through all of the latest releases, and/or future releases. Which is how this one has apparently been flying under my radar for the last three years. G.I. Joe and MOTU were my two favorite toy lines as a kid, so a documentary about either is definitely something that I needed to see. It was pretty good, started off a little slow, but then picked up until almost the very end. I could've lived without the the contemporary stuff at the end, but do realize that those things are gonna be cared about by some, so it was okay; at least they didn't waste a lot of time on them.

As I said, the cheap DVD section doesn't have as much to offer for me as it used to, so I only came home with two this time. Those two definitely made all of the searching worthwhile though!

Earlier this year, someone at the store got the not so bright idea to move the bargain CD's (95¢ or less) from the best possible location, to the absolute worst possible location. They put audiobooks where the bargain CD's and cassettes used to be, got rid of the cassettes (insert sad face emoji here), and moved the CD's over to long row of short shelves. Not only is it difficult to get down low enough to try and see everything now, but this spot is also opposite some higher up windows, which usually creates some serious glare bouncing off of the CD case spines; thus making them very difficult to read. I think I've only tried to look through them once they were moved, but it was cloudy on this particular day, so I decided to try and give them a go -- at least the upper three row that is, I refuse to get down on the floor in order to see the bottom two rows.

I spent a good 45 minutes looking through what I could see, and thankfully it wasn't time wasted as I found six for me (three for 25¢ and three for 95¢) and two that I thought my mom might enjoy, which she did; yay me!

I can remember when this album came out because of the heavy radio play that Sonic Youth's "Superstar" got at the time, but don't recall ever hearing anything else off of it. Also, I think that that was the last time that Sonic Youth got any mainstream attention. Superstar still sounds great, and around half of the other tracks aren't bad either. A few stinkers, but still worth a quarter.

Feel free to give me the business on this one. I just wanted to hear a few of these again (and didn't want to have to do so online), and you know something, I haven't been disappointed. Solid buy for a quarter. 

It's only taken 28 years (or thereabouts), but I've finally upgraded this album from cassette to CD. Maybe in another 28 years I'll be able to upgrade it from CD to direct-to-brain download (or however else people are listening to music by then) -- although I doubt I'll be able to do so for a quarter.

On to the 95 centers.

Concrete Blonde's "bloodletting" is one of my favorite albums, and has been for, gosh, I guess a couple of decades now (how has it been that long!!!). And in all of that time, I've never made much of an effort to find any of their other albums. I don't know why exactly, I just haven't. After one time through, I can say that Mexican Moon is certainly no Bloodletting, but will probably take a few more listens for me to better gauge the album.

What happened to the Kongos? They were everywhere just a few short years ago, and now I never hear about them. I haven't cracked the seal on this one yet, and have only ever heard their singles, including the lead track on this one, so I don't know what to expect. Well, that's not true, I expect it to be worth at least 95¢ :)

And here's my best find of the day, at least as far as the CD's are concerned. The albums title is what caught my eye, as any good title should. I only recognized two band names, but after seeing that it was an import, and then looking inside the booklet and seeing that everything was from the 80's, I couldn't not buy it. I listened to it on the way home, and really, really, dug it! I don't quite know how to describe most of the tracks. New wave? Dark wave? Synth? Dark Synth? I guess gun to my head, I'd go with the latter description. Compilations are often put together for a reason, so after I got home I went online to see if there was anything behind this one. If there was, I can't find it. I did see however that the CD isn't available anywhere online for less than $30, so I'd say that that was 95¢ well spent (even more so because I was using store credit). I think that were only two tracks that I didn't like, so I'm pretty happy with this one.

The store may have been a little too crowded for my liking, but given everything that I came home with, I'm glad I went.

As is often the case, at least when I still have time, I stopped by the Book Cellar, and the thrift store that's right across from it, on the way home. The thrift store was a bust, and the Book Cellar would've been too, if it hadn't been for this...

Who doesn't love an old Scholastic book? If priced right, I find them very difficult to turn down. My only problem is that I don't find them nearly enough out in the wild, maybe a couple a year at best. I actually noticed the Scholastic logo on this book before I even saw what the subject matter was. Good thing it was facing outwards on an aisle cap, otherwise I might have missed it altogether. I never noticed them amongst the offerings, and therefor never ordered any sports books from those school catalogs when I was a kid, as I was all about the "scary" stuff at the time, so I'm always a bit surprised to see sports book from Scholastic -- because as far as my memory goes, Scholastic didn't even produce books on sports. It's only as an adult that I learned that they did.

Well, looks like I was right, long and rambly was the order of the day. I think I'm typed out finally, so you're saved from any more of my nonsense, at least until the next post...