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.

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...