Starting the year off right

This season's La Niña is proving to be quite the little minx. The daytime highs were in the 60's for two straight weeks to close out the year, culminating in a wonderful, albeit very windy, 72° day this past Saturday. Fast forward about 30 hours, and it started doing this:

It's only a couple of inches, but still, it was just 72 DEGREES like a day earlier! As of Monday morning, when I took this photo, we were sitting at a much less comfortable 25º, with a real feel of 14º. This dramatic change in temperatures brought all of the usual goodies with it, high winds, torrential downpours, tornado watch's, and minor flooding. As sucky as those things are, I'd still take them over snow. In case I haven't mentioned it enough times in past years, I really hate snow! And if this isn't bad enough, we're supposed to get more later in the week, huzzah!

Thankfully for you, this post isn't about Miss Niña, or the kooky weather that she's bring here to middle Tennessee. No, it's just another "Check out this crap I bought in Knoxville" post. I do have a few traveling pics to sprinkle in this time though, so hopefully that'll spice things up a bit.

I guess it was about two weeks ago now that I made my monthly trip to Knoxville. As per usual, McKay's was the primary reason for going, but I also planned ahead of time to go to Bargain Hunters  again too. 

As one might expect, heading towards a decent sized city two weeks before Christmas, much traffic, and many crowds were encountered throughout the day. I survived though. No Rona either. 

Since McKay's is the closer of the two places, and is the one that would see the most people as the day went on, I stopped there first...

Anthologies of this sort are usually very hit-or-miss for me. Given the lineup for this one though, I'm pretty confident that it'll be a hit. And I don't usually judge a book by it's cover, but do give this one a few extra points for it's rendering of American Gothic.

Not much to say about this one. It's the second book in this trilogy, which I should've already gotten at some point in the almost two decades since it came out, but I didn't, so I'm buying it now.

And that was it for books this time, more on that in a second though, first...

When it comes to CD's, compilations are pretty much my bread and butter these days. It's getting harder to find ones that contain enough tracks that I don't already have on other albums to justify the price. This one had 11 songs that I don't already own for $1.95. That's not too bad. Even if I knew how to download songs, I don't think that I could 11 of them for $1.95. I always enjoy seeing old price stickers from other places too. Judging by the "Firm" being added to this sticker, I'm guessing that this particular album spent some time in an antique mall at some point in it's past. I'm gonna go out on a limb too and say that this didn't ever sell for $7.98, and that the person brought this one, and probably some other overpriced CD's, to McKay's to get what they could from it/them.

Here was 15 that I didn't have for $1.95. Even better! Both of these CD's had just recently been marked down from $3.95. I don't think that there'd be a big demand for either of them at this point, but still feel like I was there at just the right time to get them.

And that was this times McKay's haul. Four whole items. On any other day, I would've been a bit annoyed over going all that way and only getting four things, but I still had one more stop to make, so there was still hope that the trip could be salvaged.

I never expect anyone to remember posts that have appeared on this blog, or at least not any that are more than a couple of days old, so even though I did cover my first trip to Bargain Hunters on here, it was over two years ago, and I'd be kidding myself to think that anyone remembers it. With that in mind, Bargain Hunters bills itself as a flea market/antique mall, and is located about 15 minutes from the McKay's. It's in a fairly large building, and if I had to guess, houses a couple hundred booths/stalls.

When traveling to Bargain Hunters via McKay's, you have to skirt along the edge of downtown Knoxville, and even though I don't like being in any cities downtown, this particular trek affords one of my favorite Tennessee sights:

I'm sure that to most people living or working in the area, the Sunsphere is old hat, but to this particular blogger who's only now seen it in person twice, it's still pretty awesome. And for someone who doesn't travel, I think it's kind of neat to be able to say that I've seen two World's Fair structures in person. Seeing this one again, reminds me though of how unimpressed I was by the Space Needle as a kid. Of course, other than Key Arena, I was never very impressed anything Seattle. The best part about going to the Space Needle was the keychain, which has long since disappeared, that I got. It was of the Space Needle, and was one of those deals where it's filled with some kind of liquid, probably baby oil, and depending on which way you turn it, the elevator goes up or down. I'd like to go to the top of the Sunsphere one of these days, I think they let people do that, but I'll have to look into that some more.

Having not been to Bargain Hunters since the Rona got going, I didn't really know what to expect. Obviously much has changed (none of it for the better), and with a place like this, I expected some of those changes to be reflected in the prices. I'm happy to report that there's still a shit-ton of stuff to be found there, no empty booths that I saw, but it did seem like a lot of the prices had escalated since I was last there. Apparently some folks are the under the impression that every single item that falls into the "vintage" or "antique" categories have become hot again, and therefor must be priced as such. It's funny, sort of, but in recent years I find myself walking around places like this, and mentally picking out items that will never sell, no matter the price. There's no shortage of things that people once collected that have since fallen out of fashion, things that will never be in vogue again, and are almost certainly destined for a landfill somewhere down the line. Until then though, you'll continue to see people pricing these things like they're still in their heyday of collectability. It's at both times kind of funny and depressing, with a touch of sad mixed in for good measure.

I remembered there being multiple sellers with booths made up of nothing but books, but didn't remember that most of these booths have their books priced at "collector" prices. Some of these sellers have multiple booths linked together, and almost feel like a library as you're walking through them. It's kind of nice. I noticed plenty of books that I'd have wanted, but after picking up a few and checking their prices, I stopped pulling any more off of the shelves. I did however find one booth right before I was getting ready to leave that had it's books marked at "reader" prices (that's my price range). There were a lot of empty spots on the shelves, but I did find this nifty reference book. It has a few dust jacket issues, but after looking through it, and seeing how well it's contents were laid out, I figured it was worth the $2.50 price tag.

There are number of booths selling comic books, but only one that sells nothing but comic books. I remember this seller from last time I was there, but they switched booths, and added a lot more boxes of comics to their new booth. The majority of the booth is taken up by 30-40 $1 boxes, and then maybe another dozen "priced as marked" boxes. Everything is in alphabetical order, which is nice, but it was already getting late by the time I happened upon the booth, and I did not have time to go through a couple thousand books, so I just tried to hit some of the high points. I should've taken a picture of the booth for this post, but I'm thinking about going back later this month just to spend more time searching through the cheap boxes. If I do, I'll get a picture then. Anyway, I did find a few books, including this seasonal offering from The Punisher.

I should've probably taken these out of their old bags and scanned them, what with all of the glare and all, but I didn't. I think you'll live though. This is one of the series' that I've been meaning to go back and read for years, but always forget to look for it anytime I'm somewhere that has comics.

Here was the find of the day for me! This is one of the first comics that I ever remember getting, and reading. It's cover, which features Crossbones and Bullseye coming to blows over a prone Captain America, is basically THE cover that I associate with reading comics as a kid, and because of that association, is my favorite comic cover of all time. My childhood copy got damaged in a move about ten years ago (my fault for not having it in with the rest of my comics), and I've been trying to replace it off and on ever since. It's not a 'key issue', nor is it even that great of a story (it's part of a multiple book arc), so I never wanted to pay silly online prices for it. I have seen copies in person a few times over the years, but they're usually beat up and still overpriced. This copy is very clean, and was 75¢ more than my original copy, but I don't think I'm gonna find another one for a dollar anytime soon.

This stop at the Bargain Hunters really made up for a lackluster outing at McKay's, and the day wasn't even done yet, there were still two more sights to see...

One more shot of the Sunsphere on the way back, this time behind that cool looking church who's name I can't remember.

And here's something that you really don't see everyday.

I can't remember how far outside of Knoxville this was, but I caught up to this helicopter on a trailer on the way home -- and of course had to try and get some pictures of it.

Even if you don't care about helicopters, can we all just take a second and realize how great this photo was. I had been waiting for this guy to get out of the fast lane for about ten minutes, and when he finally did, I got me one hell of a picture as I was passing. Oh, and for those who might be wondering, my eyes were on the road. When I take pictures while driving, I just point the phone in the general direction of the thing I want to get a picture of, and try to take as many pictures as I can, all with both eyes focused on what's ahead of me. More often than not, I get blurry pictures of partial objects, which obviously aren't gonna be added to posts, but this time, I got a good one. This was by far the best picture that I took last year.

This was next shot taken during my set of bling clicking (the next one after this was just the front of the truck). I don't know anything about helicopters, but this photo captured a clear view of the model. A quick Google search on the R44 Raven II, tells me that what you're looking at here costs in the neighborhood of $200,000 to $400,000. That's an expensive toy. The trailer had a Texas plate, and the truck was headed in that direction, so it's entirely possible that whoever this was came east to pick up their new purchase, and were heading back home when I took these photos. If so, it's a good thing that they've got some money, because I would've hated to see what their gas bill was for that truck even to have come from Texas to Tennessee and back.

Between this trip and the weather, last year sure closed strong. The weather's a bit iffy so far this year, but at least I'm starting things off right on the blog, what with these being my favorite kind of posts to do and all.

I hadn't been dreaming of a white Christmas

When I got up Christmas morning it was 16° with a real feel of 3° outside, making it our coldest morning of the year. And if that wasn't bad enough, it had done this during the night/wee hours of the morning:

At 18/10°, Christmas day became the coldest day of the year, The real feel never got above single digits. It wasn't cool. Or I guess technically it was cool, but it wasn't cool. 

It snowed it a bit more during the day, even though it wasn't supposed to be doing so. I don't know about the weather people in your area, but the so called "forecasters" here, haven't been doing their job so well as of late (or really all year for that matter). 

Knowing ahead of time that it was at least going to be colder than normal on Christmas, my mom and I's now annual Christmas hike had to be taken two days earlier when it was a slightly more comfortable 54° out. [I mention it every year, but for those that don't know, or don't remember, my mom's birthday is on Christmas. A few years ago she suggested going for an impromptu hike on that day, and not being one to deny a birthday request, or need much persuasion to go wander around in the woods, we did; and it's sort of been a tradition ever since]

I didn't take a lot of pictures this year, but did have a nice time nonetheless. Well, save for a pitbull that was briefly pushing my patience to it's utmost extreme. It was obviously someone's pet, but I'm not  huge fan of dogs in general (incident when I was young), especially when they're being aggressive, and pet or not, this one was walking that very thin line between just being annoying and being a threat. 

As I said, the day itself was pretty good, but Wednesday night was a whole 'nother matter. The coming cold front met up with the "warm" air that was already here, which produced big winds all night, and dumping rain the next day. Before eventually turning into snow. I didn't get a lot of sleep Wednesday night (I think I might have a slight case of PTSD from the big storm earlier this year), but at least no trees came down this time, branches yes, trees no.

Despite the snow, and cold, Christmas day itself wasn't too bad. I spent most of the day doing small projects around the house, even completing a few.

And even though I'm long past the asking for anything on Christmas age, I still got a few things, two of which did fit in with the blogs normal content, so...

My mom did really well with this one! Horror magazines are always a welcome sight, Eerie being one of the more desirable for me. It's also a SPECIAL CHRISTMAS ISSUE, so that seemed rather appropriate for the day.

I don't own a coffee table, but am still partial to certain coffee table books.

I haven't started reading it yet, but did skim through the pages. This book is loaded with images of expensive books that I will never own, and hopefully the content will be able to live up to the pictures.

I wasn't feeling very Christmas-y this year, but all-in-all the holiday season turned out to be better than I expected. Given the less than stellar year we've had, I hope that all of you reading this were able to say the same!

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

McKay's and Snake Eyes Comics

Back in January, before everything went to sh*t, I took a quick trip over to Knoxville, a trip that would end up being my last for a while, which of course I didn't realize at the time, but who knew that things were going to get so bad, so fast!

Had I known that I wouldn't be going back for months(?), I probably would've tried to squeeze a few more places into the trip, as such I only ended up going to McKay's (heaven for lovers of physical media), which is always a must when going to Knoxville, and then hit up Snake Eyes Comics for the first time.

Other than finding lots of neat, cheap, stuff, the trip was pretty uneventful, so I'm just gonna jump right into the goods, starting with McKay's:

As per usual, my second stop upon entering the store, after the wall o' action figures, is always the huge section of $1.95 and under DVD's and Blu-Ray's, which by the way was pretty heavy on the Blu-Ray's this time. And as per usual, all of my movie purchases ended up coming from this section!

I've owned The Dark Crystal on video for what seems like forever now, but have longed for an upgrade, I just hadn't ever come across a cheap copy on DVD, until now of course. This film was considered essential viewing when I was a kid, I would imagine that that's no longer the case for today's kids, I suspect that it would end up being a little too complex for most of them.

Obscure 1970's television documentary about cryptids? Hosted by Peter Graves? I think that my young inner self is still recuperating from the shock of this find!

This one was completely new to me, and I absolutely loved it! This film has many twists and turns, and is nearly impossible to talk about, without giving away spoilers, so I'll just have to highly recommend it -- especially if you're the sort that likes a good story, great acting, well orchestrated action sequences, and plot twists.

As an aside, I don't watch a lot of newer films, and when I do decide to give something a go, I tend to not like it more often than not. That being said, in the last decade or so, I've seen more good new films that have come out of South Korea, than I have Hollywood. Not that this is all that surprising mind you, especially given that 25-50% of everything that comes from Hollywood these days is made for the Chinese market, and is sort of expected to be bad, but still, you'd think that something would occasionally come out of the other 50-75%. Assassination was a perfect example of pretty much everything that Hollywood doesn't do right, I'd suggest that some of the higher-ups watch it and take notes, but that wouldn't do any good, as they'd most likely end up just trying to remake it instead.

I've mentioned a few times in previous McKay's posts, that one of the nicest things about the store is that they will actually lower prices on items that aren't moving, unlike a lot of places where stuff will just sit and collect dust if it's priced too high, and they will put the new price sticker over the old one, so it's always fun to come home and see what the previous price(s) was/were, Assassination was a perfect example of this:

This is what I paid (for a still sealed Blu-Ray BTW), and this is what the previous price had been:

Pretty big drop, eh? This game is even more fun when there's three or four labels under the current one.

Trollhunter had been on my to get list for, well, for what feels like forever now, but it's pretty much always $10 or more everywhere, so to be able to finally find a sealed copy in the cheap stuff was pretty great. I can't remember when or where I first saw this film, but I'm fairly sure that I saw it early (at least by U.S. standards), because I can remember going online after watching it, and couldn't find any sites here in the States where people were talking about it. The "found footage" genre isn't usually one of my favorites, but this movie was so original, that it really does surpass said genre. I remember hearing talk of Hollywood trying to remake this, but thank goodness that seems to have fallen by the wayside, because this does NOT need some crappy remake, or as it's often now called, a "reimagining".

Just for sh*ts and giggles, here's another example of prices being reduced:

What I paid vs. the original price:

Not quite as dramatic as it was with Assassination, but I'll take it!

I only vaguely remember this show, and until coming across this (sealed) DVD set, had honestly forgotten all about it. The 90's were a hotbed for these sorts of shows, most of which I watched at the time. They all seemed to be trying to recapture the greatness that was In Search of..., unfortunately the majority of them didn't even come close, and it's been my experience, that after all of these years, most of them don't hold up very well. I haven't cracked the seal on this set yet, so I can't whether it's held up or not, but even if it does end up disappointing, I'll have no regrets on using $1.95 in credit to do a little time traveling.

I never thought the day would come when I would be so out of the loop that movies could come and go without me ever having heard about them, I mean there was a time when I saw/watched every single trailer for upcoming features, and would often even read reviews even for stuff that I had absolutely no interest in - just so I could know what people were talking about if the film ever got brought up - but those days seem to be long gone, because I am constantly coming across new(ish) things that I am not familiar with in the least. Although after watching The Raven, it's not hard to see how this could happen, and it's not that it was that bad, but it could've been a lot better, and I'll have to agree with the consensus online, that Jeffrey Combs should've been cast as a Poe, as John Cusack is a little too John Cusack-y here to be believed as Edgar Allan Poe. Thankfully this sealed copy was only $0.95, otherwise I might've felt ripped off.

Think what you will, but I love this movie, and have since it came out. It's fun, and wasn't afraid to switch things up, which I appreciate. I've had it on VHS for a long time (although I have the sequels on DVD), and just figured it was time for an upgrade.

That was it for the movies, but I did grab a couple of books too...

Given all that's happened since January, I'd love to be able to lie and say that I bought this because I some sort of notion as to what was coming, but the reality is that I only got it because it was cheap, and I hadn't ever read too much about the Spanish flu -- unfortunately, even after trying to read this, I'm still left saying that I haven't ever read much about the Spanish flu!

I saw someone praising this book recently, and I couldn't help but wonder if that person and I had read the same book, as praise is not something that I would heap upon this book (speaking of heaps...). For better or worse, I tend to be a bit of a scatterbrain, whether talking or typing, I'm prone to bouncing around from topic to topic, but this author makes me look like, well, I don't know, I can't think of a person who's renowned for their laser focus right now, but whoever that might be, is who this author makes me look like. The book starts off by giving us a biography of some doctor, that's about 25 pages right there, then the next 60 or so are spent talking about the history of John Hopkins University. Admittedly I skipped some of the JH stuff, as I bought a book about the flu, not a university. Anyways, at around page 85, we finally get to the flu, for five whole pages, then were whisked away to learn about another doctor, then a few more pages of the flu, then another doctor... and that was about all I good take! I was like halfway through the book, and there was maybe ten pages so far about the actual flu. There may have been more afterwards, but my patience for this book was officially gone. I guess one of these days I'll have to see if anyone else wrote a book about the Spanish flu, so I can get it, and then maybe I'll be able to say that I've read a book on the subject, because I certainly can't say so after this last one

I still haven't cracked this one open yet, so I can't comment on it here today. I'm already pretty familiar with a few of the players in this one, but am hoping that they'll be some tidbits that I don't already know.

So, that's it for McKay's. I came home with a fairly decent haul, and as per usual, I've got a bunch of store credit there, so none of this was out of pocket, which is always nice.

My second, and final, stop of the day was at Snake Eyes Comics, which is a place that I've wanted to check out for literally years now, but don't ask why it took me so long to do so - especially given that it's less than ten minutes from McKay's - because I will not have an answer for you.

This place was little hard to find, and ended up being a bit smaller - in size and selection - than the online reviews led me to believe.

One thing that people reviewing this shop always mention, and was my main reason going, is the large selection of cheap books, allegedly all under a dollar. This ended up being a tad misleading, as granted there was a decent amount of cheap books, but the majority, say fifteen boxes worth, were a $1 each, and then the fifty cent stuff (maybe five boxes worth), were tucked away under a table, and weren't exactly easy to try and look through.

I basically just ended up going through the dollar boxes, and can honestly say that most of that stuff should've been priced much lower, but I had to look anyway, just in case. I never read The Defenders when I was younger, so even though I was coming across quite a few issues, they mean much, at least not until I saw #114 here, what with the Lovecraftian baddie on the cover and all. Apparently, Null the Living Darkness, was primarily a Defenders villain, and despite being a somewhat interesting character, didn't appear in too many books. As for the book itself, I don't know if I'm going to be reading too many more Defenders stories, seemed like a bit of a clusterf*** with all of the characters involved, but I will probably try to find the other couple of Null issues at some point though.

The only other book that I found, or at least the only other one that interested me, was this beat-to-hell copy of Forbidden Worlds. This copy has clearly been through the ringer and back, since it's '63 publication, and probably wasn't worth the dollar that I paid for it, but it was the only horror-ish book that I came across in those boxes, and I really wanted to read it. Oh, and that 5¢ is written directly on the cover, in grease pen no less -- would've been interesting to know when that sale was, and what else could've been had for a nickel.

I did look around for a bit more after finishing up the dollar boxes, but there wasn't anything else for me, a lot of stuff from the last decade or so, aka stuff that I don't really care about.

After wanting to go there for so long, I have to say that I was a little (or a lot) disappointed, although I don't blame the shop, or the owner, for this disappointment, so much as I do the online reviewers for hyping it up the way they have. I can't imagine that I'll ever be going back, but I guess if someone's in the area, and you just so happen to be interested in the newer books, then this shop may be better suited to your tastes then it was mine.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.