McKay's, Bargain Hunters, and the Sunsphere

Two weeks before Christmas was probably not the best time to get the urge to go somewhere, and then act on that urge by going to Knoxville, but I went ahead and did it anyway!

For as long as I've been buying presents, I've always been the sort to have my Christmas shopping done months in advance, waiting until the month of seems very odd to me, so odd, that at least once a year I have to be reminded that many people do this -- unfortunately for me, this reminder doesn't come until I'm out somewhere amongst people who are frantically searching for last minute gifts, such was the case on this particular day.

It's not very often that I get the urge to go somewhere, but when I do, I usually end up at McKay's (for those that don't know, it's a gignormous bookstore that also sells just about every other form of entertainment that one could think of as well). I think it's safe to say that it's my favorite place to go since moving to Tennessee, ideally I'd like to be there at least once a month, but because of the drive,  that hasn't worked out so well -- I'm on more of a once every 2-3 months schedule.

Knowing that I'd be going back to Knoxville at some point, I started looking for other places to go about a month prior, namely antique malls. Knoxville doesn't have nearly as many antique malls as I would've thought they would, but I did find one that looked promising, so time permitting, I was going to try and fit that into this trip as well -- spoiler alert, I did have time, and did go, and you'll be hearing about it a little further down in the post, but before I get to that...

My heart really wasn't in it this time, but I still made an effort to look through the massive $1.99 or less DVD/Blu-Ray section, mostly because they're starting to add a lot more television seasons to the mix, and I keep hoping that I'll come across something that I actually like -- the problem is, I'm not usually a fan what's popular with the masses, so finding things like American Horror Story and The Walking Dead doesn't do too much for me. I did find a few other things though, so...

Most people either love it or hate it (and aren't likely to have their opinion changed either way), so I won't spend a lot of time talking about the film adaption of Watchmen, other than to say that I'm a fan of it, and had been looking for a cheap copy of the director's cut (if you've never seen it, this the version to watch) for a what seems like a few years now, thankfully that search is now over.

You know how hearing and/or seeing certain things can take you back to a certain time or place? Well, odd as it may sound, early Chuck Norris films do just that for me. All I have to do is think about one, and I'm instantly whisked back to the mid 90's. I don't know how many people still remember it, but Chuck's early work was a Friday night (late) staple on WGN for what seemed like years. I can't tell you how many times I'd meet up with friends on Monday morning, and try to talk about either that weekend's Chuck Norris picture, Up All Night's offering, and/or MonsterVision gem -- only to find that they had no idea what I was talking about! In retrospect, I really wish that I could've had a group of friends whose interests were more in line with mine.

I don't recall how old I was at the time, but Death Rides a Horse was the first spaghetti western that I ever saw, and because of this it's always held a special place in my heart. I've had multiple copies on VHS over the years, but for $0.95 I couldn't resist the opportunity to finally get an upgrade. And Beyond the Law might not be Lee Van Cleef's best film, but it's still very watchable.

And that was it for the cheap DVD's, there was just so many people looking through them, a few of whom were doing that terribly annoying thing of talking (loudly) to each other from what was essentially across the room (50 or so feet apart). I really dislike being caught in the middle of those kinds of conversations, so for the first time since I've been going there, I just walked away without having gone through all of the bargain stuff.

The comic books upstairs were my next stop, where I spent way too much time looking at the recent influx of bargain comics (most are $0.40). When it was all said and done, I had a stack of about a dozen books, but after looking through them again, I realized that I didn't really need them, and the odds of me actually ever reading them was pretty slim, so back into the box they went. This may have seemed like a waste of time to some, but I was kind of proud of myself for being able to put them back, as that's not something that I would've been able to do even just a few short years ago.

All of the music is upstairs too, and even though I hadn't intended on looking for anything, thanks to some folks who I had to squeeze by (they were blocking the aisle), a CD caught my eye, one which I didn't ultimately get, but it did lead me to two other's.

For the most part, compilations are the only CD's that I ever buy anymore. When looking through them, I usually just look for the one's that I don't already have at least half of the songs on other albums -- and this one fit the bill! One of the reasons that I like McKay's so much is that they actually lower the prices on things, which is very uncommon for places that sell this kind of stuff. I always get a kick out of coming home and peeling off items that have more than one sticker (they put price stickers on top of each other) on them, and seeing what the previous price(s) was. In this case, I paid $2.95 (not bad for around twenty songs that I didn't own), but the price on the sticker underneath that one was $4.95.

I remember the Living in Oblivion series being THE go to for 80's compilations about 25 years ago. With the internet being a thing now, there's probably plenty of other options out there, but I still have an affinity for this series.

Since I'm always trying to go to multiple places while in Knoxville, but still be out of Knoxville proper by the time rush hour starts up, I don't usually get to spend as much time at McKay's as I would like, meaning that certain things end up not getting looked at -- like books, which is fine, since at any given time I haven dozens of books in my "to read" pile, but this time I made it a point to wander over to the history section before leaving.

Normally I wouldn't get two books on the same subject, at least not at the same time, but after flipping through them both - trying to figure out which one would be better - it seemed like even though they were about the same disaster, the authors went in different directions when writing about it. So, since I couldn't decide which one sounded better, and with them only being $0.25 apiece, I just went ahead and got them both. I've already read the Thomas/Witts book, and would recommend it to anyone who might be interested in the subject matter. It's a bit cliche to say, but the way it was written, you really feel like you're reading a movie, a very fast paced movie!

So that was it for McKay's, I don't remember what the exact total was, but I think I ended up using around $10 in credit.

After eating my lunch in the car, it was off to Bargain Hunters, which is about fifteen minutes away, and is much further into Knoxville than I had previously gone. My first surprise came when I saw the Sunsphere on the way there, I had no idea that I would be going by it, as such I couldn't get any pictures on the way, but plenty were taken on the way back (those are a little further down).

I had read a bunch of reviews for Bargain Hunters, most of which were positive, but there weren't very many pictures, and I didn't see any mention of how many booths there were, so I really didn't know what to expect -- after all, I've never actually been to a place that bills itself as an antique mall and flea market.

For those who have never been, but are planning on going, one small bit of advice, don't be like me and think that you're just gonna show up and be in and out in 30 minutes or less, at least not on your first trip -- because this place is big! The layout isn't conducive to photos, but there had to be at least 200 booths, and lots of variety, in fact there was too much variety for the short amount of time that I had left for myself to look around, and ended up seeing less than half of what there was to see.

I was really surprised too with how many booths had comic books, I made it through a few, but that was just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. This picture was from the last one that I walked by on my way to the register. I had to go, so I just stopped long enough to take the picture, and then continued on my way.

Besides the huge selection, it doesn't help either that I didn't have a lot of money to play with that day, as such I only ended up buying two things, and one of those was for my mom. I found this issue of Unexpected in comic box that said everything in it was between $1-4. It's from later in the series, but I didn't have it, and it's in fairly decent shape, so I figured it was worth the $2 price tag.

I will definitely be going back, but next time I won't be trying to do McKay's before, I'll just go straight there -- and thanks to Mark Aubrey, I now know that there's a comic book shop that's just a couple of blocks away too, so I'll be trying to hit that up as well.

On to the Sunsphere...

As mentioned, I couldn't get any pictures on the way there, but I was ready for it on the way back. I ended up taking a ton of pictures while I was driving (don't do that, kids!), but don't worry, I was paying attention to the road, I just pointed the phone in it's general direction, and kept snapping away. I probably ended up taking around fifty pictures, with the four in this post being the only good one's, the rest were either blurry, or didn't even have the Sunsphere showing in the frame.

Oh, and just in case anyone doesn't know what the Sunsphere is, and doesn't feel like Googling it, the short answer is that was built for the 1982 World's Fair, serving as the symbol for that year's fair. Fans of The Simpsons might also know it as the "Wigsphere", and no, I didn't stop in for a wig.

This is my favorite one right here, you can see the sphere just peeking out from around the Church Street United Methodist Church (I looked it up), which is an incredible looking building (you need to Google it when you're done commenting on this post). I'll have to try and get some better shots of the church at some point as well.

This was as close as I got to the sphere. It was unfortunate that it had to be cloudy that day, as I would imagine that those glass panes are quite a sight when the sun is out. That being said, I'm still glad that I was finally able to see it in person.

It's rare for me to describe a day spent among the masses as "fun", but this truly was a fun day!

If all goes well, I'm planning on heading back to Knoxville this week, so another McKay's/mystery place post may be up in the very near future...


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

DC comics buyout at Ollie's part 2

In part one of this series, I mentioned that if all went as planned, I would be going to the Nashville Ollie's (as well as back to the Cookeville location) to see what might still be available from this sale that has been going on for six weeks and counting, and even though mother nature seemingly tried to dissuade me from doing so, I did end up going last Saturday... and thankfully there was still plenty to be had.

The forecast was calling for 2-4" of rain to fall throughout the day (and it did), being from the Pacific Northwest I am quite comfortable driving in any adverse weather conditions, but the people here are a different story, so I do have some mild concerns about sharing the roadways with them during inclement weather.

About 30 minutes into the drive there, it started dumping, so the next hour or so was spent traveling through a whiteout. Thankfully though, the traffic kept moving at a decent pace (75-85 mph), so my time table was effected in any way. I actually ended up getting there early, and was the first person through the doors that morning.

Once again I'm starting off with a couple of Showcase "phone books". I wasn't familiar with Strange Adventures in the least, but with a cover and synopsis like that, how could I not give it a try?

This series sounds like it was pretty hokey, but for $3.99 it's worth the risk.

This was by far the biggest, both in price and in sheer size, purchase of the day. I had seen this book being shown in some of the YouTube videos that were made right after the sale started, but I figured that after almost a month and a half later that there was going to be no chance of my still being able to find one. The comic book gods must have been with me that day, as it was the last copy that they had. Also, within just couple of minutes after I put it in my basket... another fellow showed up, and by the way he was checking the prices of everything on his phone I could tell that he was buying for resale purposes, and had I not gotten there before him, this book would have been listed on eBay by day's end.

See how big this honker is, I would be very surprised if it weighed in at less than five pounds.

The retail price of this book was $60, and it's currently $40 on Amazon, so even though the $12.99 price tag seems like a lot, it really isn't. Considering that this was the book that I was most hoping to acquire, I would have been happy even if that was all that I ended up getting, but it wasn't... so let's get back to it.

I believe that there are three different Tales of the Batman books out there, all three of which were done by a different artist, on this particular day I able to pick up two of the three (the other one is a couple of books down).

More Batman of course. This is the third book of a three-part series, so I'm going to have to try and find the first two at some point.

For such a relatively thin book, this one has got a lot going on!

This is the one book that I have a little bit of buyer's remorse on, as I didn't read the back as carefully as I should have, but maybe The Outsiders teaming up with John Walsh won't be as bas as it sounds.

This Shazam hardback didn't have a synopsis, and with it still being sealed and all, I just have to hope that it will be good. Me thinks that Billy might have some choice words in regards to this particular title.

I suspect that this will be the better of the two Tales of the Batman books that I ended up getting. I was surprised to find that the Nashville location still had so many different hardbacks available, not that I'm complaining mind you, I'm just sayin'.

No one should be too surprised to hear that I had to make a quick perusal of the toy aisle before leaving, or that I ended up finding something of interest either. They also had the Arnim Zola figure from this series, but it is a very unattractive figure, so he had stay behind.

The Nashville Ollie's also has a fairly decent DVD section as well, and not surprisingly, I found a couple more things of interest, including this boxed series of BBC's Life. This was another great production from the BBC, my only complaint was them having Oprah narrate it for the American audience, while the great David Attenborough narrated the version meant for European audiences. David always narrates the BBC nature programs, so I still don't know why they changed it up for this particular series. I mean if you were going to change it up for the American crowd, you could have at least gotten someone with a more distinguished voice to the job... and someone who wouldn't mispronounce as many words as Oprah did throughout the series!

No, this isn't Manbo, it's the surprisingly enjoyable Manborg.

I hadn't seen this before, and had no idea what to expect, but I ended up really liking it. It's cheesy as all get out, and the budget for this picture had to be like $5, but they made it work. I really can't put into words why I liked it, but I would recommend giving it a chance, especially if you come across it for $1.99.

So as I mentioned at the beginning, I took an oh so slight detour before heading home in order to hit up the Cookeville store again. I was most curious to see if anything new had been put out in the week since my previous visit. It's about 75 miles between stores and it was of course, still raining... now I was driving right into the storm, so for the next hour and change it was like driving straight into a monsoon. The highways here were not designed to accommodate a lot of rain, so they tend to acquire standing water pretty quickly, which made the drive a little more interesting as well. I saw one car that, judging by the angle of it's resting place, had hydroplaned off the road on the opposite side of the highway. And a car in front me hit a pool of water and almost lost it, as the driver obviously panicked when he/she started to slide and almost over corrected right into a concrete divider, which obviously would have been bad for them... and for me, as I probably wouldn't have been able to avoid hitting them, especially since there was a semi on my right, so was no where else for me to go.

Anyway, I made it to Cookeville in one piece (not that I thought I wouldn't), and ended up finding a few more things:

Without even trying I seem to have acquired a mini-collection of these Showcase books. This was yet another title that I wasn't familiar with, but since sounds sort of Thundarrish, I am looking forward to reading it.

I'm expecting this to be really good too, and how great is that cover?

There was quite a few different titles that hadn't been out the week before, but the above three were the only one's that jumped out at me. I thought it was kind of interesting too, that all three of the copies that I got, appeared to be the only copy of each title available.

All in all, I would say that it was another successful outing, and certainly worth all the driving. After making the trek to the Knoxville location a couple of days ago, I now have at least one more entry for this series, but I'll probably get a few card posts in before I get around to the haul that was brought home from that trip.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

DC comics buyout at Ollie's part 1

A little over a year ago now, a new Ollie's Bargain Outlet opened up in Cookeville (TN), which is about thirty minutes away from me, and even though I've wanted to go since it's opening, it wasn't until two Saturday's ago that I finally did... what can I say? I hate long car rides, and anything over ten minutes is considered by me to be a long car ride.

Before going, I was really curious to see how this Ollie's would compare to the one in Nashville (that experience can be read about here), and after going, I can say that they're pretty similar, although the one in Nashville is quite a bit bigger.

When I arrived on that fateful (too dramatic?) Saturday morning, I headed for the books section first (most people seem to do the same) and couldn't help but notice a giant table with stacks and stacks of what appeared to be mostly trade paperbacks. As I made my over to the table and started looking through every thing, I kept thinking how odd it was that they would have all these (ignorance is not bliss), especially since the Nashville location didn't have anything like this last summer.

Since I was going somewhere (see below) after Ollie's that day, and I was trying to get home by a certain time, I didn't look through everything quite as thoroughly as I should have, that being said, I still found some really great stuff.

It was only later that night, after doing some Googling, that I found out what's what... namely, that Ollie's had bought a huge (19 truckloads, according to their ad) inventory of DC books, which included graphic novels, omnibuses, TPB's, etc. And as per usual, I was probably the last person to find out about this once in a lifetime sale, which at this point has been going on for a little over a month now.

After finding out about the sale, I decided that if everything worked out alright, I would go to the Nashville location, as well as back to Cookeville for a more thorough searching the following Saturday, which I did, and all those goodies will be seen in part two. And if all goes well, I will be going to Knoxville for the first time in a couple of days, and wouldn't cha know it, they just happen to have an Ollie's as well, so I wouldn't rule out a part three.

Since I haven't read any of these books yet, I can't really provide too much commentary, so I'll just go with my standard VHS post format, which is to show the cover, and in case anyone sees something of interest, the synopsis on the back.

I picked up quite a few Batman books, most of which will be in the next post.

People seem to be split on the "Showcase Presents" series, mostly because they were reprinted in black and white. While I do wish they would have been done in their original colors, most of the titles are from the pulp era, which means that most of those original books tend be on the pricey side, so I can forgive the black and white printing if it means that I get a chance to read them. Plus...

... it's pretty darn hard to complain about getting over 500 pages of something like this for $2.99!

I'll have a few more of these in the next post as well.

This one sounded really good, plus it's got a really fantastic cover.

My only complaint about this liquidation sale is that I wish there were more JSA titles.

After reading about some of the other stuff that people were finding at their local Ollie's', I had thought that there was going to be an overabundance of New 52 books, but after thinking back at what I saw during this trip, as well as what was seen during the second outing, I can't say that I really saw too many of The New 52 titles. Although for the record, I don't hate the New 52 stuff as much as some people seem to. Other than this book, which is a hardback by the way, and the "Showcase Presents", everything in this post was $3.99 apiece. I would also find out after my second visit, that a lot of these were the only copies to be had at this particular location.

Since I was already there, I couldn't leave without perusing the toy aisles, and while they weren't very impressive at this Cookeville location, I still managed to find two things that had to come home with me:

I initially thought this Stay Puft was from one of the countless newer toy lines that were paying homage to the original film(s), but instead it's from the recent remake/reimagining, which I haven't seen, and have no intention of ever seeing... but once he's out of the package, I can just pretend that he's from the original. Also, he light's up:

It would have looked better in the dark, and my finger's sort of in the way, but you get the idea.

This guy's from the recent picture as well, and even though I don't know anything about him, he was just too cool looking to leave behind.

And here he is lit up.

After Ollie's, I went to a place called Mountain Top Comics and Collectables, which is also in Cookeville. I only found out about this shop recently, even though I've driven by it every time that I've gone to Nashville, and never had a clue that it was there. Since this post is getting a little long, I will provide a more in-depth review at some later date, but for now I will just show one of my two purchases (the other item is going to be a gift so it will remain unseen):

This shops toy selection was amazing, I could have dropped a thousand dollars in just a couple of minutes, provided of course that I actually had an extra thousand dollars to spend.

As always, I had no idea that McFarlane had done a Grinch line in 2007, if I had, I would have gotten them all at the time. Not surprisingly, these now sell for quite a bit, but I got this "Two Sizes Too Small" figure for considerably cheaper than what it goes for online.

I've mentioned it here on the blog many times, that I am a dedicated package opener, but on this particular figure, I'm actually slightly hesitant to open it. I'm sure it's just because of the price tag that they seem to carry, as I'm not accustomed to opening things that have actual monetary value. I guess just so I don't end up with some kind of opener's remorse, he'll remain in the package for a little longer.

If you liked this post, you might also be in the next one, as it will feature the spoils from my trip to the Nashville Ollie's, as well as another stop at the Cookeville location the following weekend.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.