Retro Y'all!

In between getting Tucker down off the drapes and out of my hair (Literally.  He loves my hair and Keith's beard and considers them his personal playgrounds.)  I've been binge-watching old episodes of the E! show Hollywood Mysteries and Scandals, which just goes to show how out of touch I am with modern life.  Everyone else marathons Game of Thrones. I gorge on old entertainment documentaries. I'll never be cool.

 Anyway, there was an ep on Bobby Darin and this got stuck in my head.  Enjoy.



The song has a fascinating history, by the way.  For a bonus treat, click here for the German version by composer Kurt Weill's wife, Lotte Lenye.

Have a safe holiday weekend everyone.  Wear your sunscreen and be careful with the fireworks.

It's Time for Celebrity Look-a-Likes!

Another Good Reason!

This is Tucker.

He's new in our house.

He's also the reason there's no Monday Rambles today.  He's at the Humane Society getting his little boy parts snipped having some body work done.  We're frantically running around kitten-proofing the house.  He's only six months old, and six month old kittens can get into everything.

I'll be staying home for a few days to oversee the socialization.

Some of us are not so sure about this.

Elegy for Adam West

I've hesitated to post this, because I don't want to be seen as making light of his death or the loss his family and friends are feeling right now.  Still, there's something in it that pretty perfectly sums up that very loss.  At least for me.

There were several times in the Batman series when the Caped Crusaders have been presumed dead and Gotham City goes into full-fledged mourning.  This is not from one of those episodes.  In fact, Batman isn't even visible in this scene, which is one of my three favorite scenes from the whole show.  Nevertheless, this is one of those scenes that pretty much sums up the appeal and beauty of the whole show. 

Victor Buono as King Tut seemed to relish his every moment on screen, tearing into every line in order to take it straight over the top chewing every bit of scenery to a pulp as he went there.  Adam West brought that same relish to his portrayal of Batman, only where Buono over-played, he chose to under-play.  His Batman is one that's smooth as hell, cool as all get out, and totally in on the joke, even though he appears to be clueless at times.  You have to watch West closely to pick up on everything he packs into his performance.  It's as stuffed with goodies as Batman's utility belt.

Back to the scene.  Batman and Robin are trying to rescue a kidnapped heiress from the clutches of King Tut, who wants to make her his Cleopatra.  Robin has been nabbed by Tut's men and tied up.  Batman, after a brief Bat-Fight, was clobbered by Tut and placed in a sarcophagus.  This leads to the cliff-hanger ending, as Tut submerges the sarcophagus in a vat of water in order to drown Batman.

And we get this wonderful bit of dialogue:



We had just laid down for a post-yard sale nap on Saturday, when Keith decided to check his phone for news.  He rolled over, shook me and said: "I hate to wake you up with bad news, but Adam West has died."  My first thought was:  "He's on his way to that great, big belfry in the sky."

I know there are those who would probably prefer to use "Bat Cave" in that sentence, but it seems much more appropriate to me to use a line from the show itself.

I'm just a bit too young to have caught the show in its original run.  I had not even turned two when it debuted!  I've watched the reruns since the 70's, though, making up for lost time.  Adam West was a aprt of my childhood, teen-agerdom, and adulthood.  This was one of those blows that hurt.  At this point, unless I've missed somebody, only Julie Newmar and Burt Ward are still with us.  Everyone else is off having a grand cast reunion.  Maybe it's in the belfry.  Maybe it's in the Bat Cave.  Meanwhile, the rest of us are left without a Bat-Channel to tune into tomorrow to see how Batman gets out of this one.

Farewell, Adam West.  Thanks for all the Bat-Memories.  You're already missed.

No Ramble Today

Kinda busy right now.

And there's still at least two days to go!

Retro Y'all!

There's really only one way to go this weekend:



After all, it is Wonder Woman Day!  This is, of course, due to the much-anticipated, long-awaited movie release.  It's finally here.

Since it's also junk set out weekend, I won't be going for a few days, but I am looking forward to it.

BONUS:  The episode these credits were lifted from guest-starred Anne Francis!

To Provoke the Thoughts

A while back, I wrote a post about the the nature of photography and how it's changed in the digital age.  I still wonder what is going to be at the estate sales of the future in place of boxes of family photos. 

Monday, when I was trying to find the blog post I wrote about my mother's death for a post on the Book of Faces, I stumbled across four or five older posts in a row that had deleted videos embedded in them.  On the one hand, this makes me a little sad, given that this blog is a record of the last twelve years of my life, off and on.  On the other hand, do I really want to go back and clean up 1000+ old posts when there are much better (and more fun) uses of my time?

John Green works a bit with both those ideas in this interesting video.  If you don't know who he is, check out the vlogbrothers YouTube channel.  It's pretty awesome. 

Tell me honestly....

Would you buy used furniture 

From this man?

Well, would you?

I'm not convinced myself, but dozens of other people have, surprisingly.  C'est la vie!

Retro Y'all!

This one is stuck in my head a lot these days, because it plays at least once a day in the Peddlers Mall.  I chose this version over the others on YouTube because of the "enthusiastic" hand clappers in the background.  Can you imagine putting "Back Up Hand Clapper" on your resume?  (Although I do have a secret fantasy of shaking a mad tambourine onstage with a happening band for one special performance.  Too bad I have no sense of rhythm.)

By the way, as much as I love Madonna, we'll not ever talk about her cover version.  Talk about something that should have been shot down as soon as it was proposed.  Some songs are sacrosanct classics, you know.

I have memories of being about fourth or fifth grade and getting an LP for Christmas--one of those educational types--that was all original songs for kids about American history.  I can still remember snippets of the songs.  The one about the stock market crash in 1929 had a chanted refrain ("Stocks are going up!  Going up!") that kept building and building until the crash happens.  I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the album or who put it out.  Of course, my copy is long, long gone.

It's one of those things I would love to find one day at a thrift, if only to prove to myself that I am not hallucinating and that the opening song really, inexplicably, was......American Pie!  Surely, I cannot be misremembering something as bizarre at that.  Surely.

The reason this sticks out in my mind is because I remember having to ask my mother what "rye" was the first couple of times I heard it.  I thought that the good old boys were drinking whiskey and eating bread, but since the song said they were "drinking whiskey and rye" I thought they were putting the bread into the whiskey.  YUCK!

I also had to ask what a "levee" was.

I've never been able to turn up anything on the internet about this album.  I just keep running into references to Don McLean, Madonna, or that damn movie.  Anyone who could help me prove that I'm not insane would be much appreciated. I know I'm not making this up in my head.

If you need or would like to read an interpretation of the lyrics, you can start here.  There are several others out there.

Where Have We Been?

Well, the truth is I had to step back for a bit.

2016 was not the best year for me, you know.

First off, there was the break ups.  The whole deal with Calvin Harris was the talk of the town for way too long.  And then there was the Tom Hiddleston thing.  Honestly.  It's like some people have nothing better to do than analyze my every move and love interest.  And now, everyone is all expecting songs about them!

And then there are the feuds.  The Katy Perry thing continues to drag on.  What a bore.  Then that whole thing with Kim and Kanye happened.  I mean, really.  That girl in the video didn't even look like me.  As if!

So, I decided that the best thing for me to do was take a break from everything, including social media and just concentrate on me for a while.

Besides, I had an album to work on.  Those songs about Calvin and Tom ain't gonna write themselves, you know.

Wait a sec.

Album?  Kanye?  Calvin?

Oh darn.  I've gone and mixed myself up with Taylor Swift again.

I hate it when that happens.









Seriously, I'm okay.  I didn't mean to make anyone worry.  You're all just too kind and too sweet.  I'll have more to say in a bit.

Continuing

Some of the bigger freebies this time around.  Smalls tomorrow.   You'll have to forgive the pics.  Everything is all at the booth.  I'm pressed for time.  No time to stage.  Or even take decent shots.

Hauling it all in by the cartload!

I have been out of windows FOREVER, so finding them has been a real priority for me.  They were pretty scarce this set out.  I was beginning to despair over the situation when I found five.  They're all single pane and the same size.  This one was the only one with any hardware.
 

Bird cage and small vintage wooden chest from the store haul.  The top to the chest is off the hinges, but I love it anyway.

Fun yellow wicker chest I found in a construction dumpster.

Yellow crate that I almost had to fight someone over.  I was there first, dammit!

Odd blue wooden box that I found last Saturday in a junk pile while we were on our way to lunch. It's got outlets on it and a wire coming out of it, making it too intriguing to pass up.  Any wooden item that is this shade of blue seems to sell for me.

Poor Emma!  Someone set her stool on the curb in a pile of junk.  Judging by the cobwebs that were on it, she hadn't used it in a while.  This is a really nice paint job, by the way.  Whoever did it remembered to seal it or wax it or whatever.  it was so filthy that it was almost black from grime, but it cleaned right up really easily with no loss of color.

Handmade yard stuff, barn red even!  

Small, handmade wooden media shelf--really solid.  From the store stash.

Small round table.  It looks like it was made from a cable spool, but it's not.  It was manufactured that way.  Definitely a project for some talented soul.

It's covered in band stickers and graffiti about Courtney and Kyle and their undying love.  I blacked out the last names just in case someone might recognize them.

This cute little table came from three houses down.

C'mon!  Who doesn't need a painting of one gigantic strawberry?  From the store haul.

The one lone shutter I found this time around. In front of it are tools and ski poles from the store haul.  Of course, I would grab the ski poles.

Somehow we ended up on the same street as two scrapper trucks, but were in front of them, so I got these cool metal garden chairs. They are seriously sturdy and high quality.  There was a matching table that was way too large for Mazda, so I had to leave it for the scrappers.

The gas can is from Belknap, a now-defunct, hardware and tool company that was based in Louisville.  Their stuff is very popular with collectors in these parts.  I love selling stuff with local ties.

Still more to come tomorrow.

Freebies

Time to start sharing stuff and telling stories, I guess.  I'm getting behind and still need to get some pics of some stuff.

The first rule of Junk Set Out is that you don't talk about Junk Set Out.   Oh, wait.  Wrong movie.

The real first rule of Junk Set Out is that it's not really, officially Junk Set Out until you see the first toilet!

This one gets bonus points for being tipped over!

The second rule of Junk Set Out is:  "Sometimes you find porn."

Just laying right in the top of a trash can like that!

I left that where I found it.  It wasn't the only porn I found, either.  The "other team" was also represented, so to speak.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's begin.

I found three complete season sets of Friends and one that was missing two discs.  Seriously.  I also got a bunch of kids books and Disney DVD's and VHS tapes at that house.  I'll be keeping a few of the Disney DVD's.  Classic animation never goes out of style.

Christmas tree cut from a pallet. Safely stored until next year.

Painted primitive chair from the freebies at the store closing.  There was a group of folks standing around waiting for new stuff to come out, which was happening all the time.  I spent the whole afternoon there, between the parking lot and the inside room/.  I also bought a few things, because 75% off is close to free.

Anyway, I came out of the store with an armload, and this chair had been added to the parking lot pile.  I grabbed it and some dude tried to tell me it was wobbly and didn't sit right.  I told him that it was steady enough to sit on a porch and hold a large fern this summer.  Keith told me the guy looked at me like I was crazy.

Since I'm sharing freebies, another vendor gave me a box of vintage dishes recently.  I'm selling the box as a set, except for these four cups.  You can't really tell from this pic, but these are actually the size of more modern mugs, as opposed to typical coffee/tea cups you find in vintage sets of dishes.  I've priced them separately, because I like the look of them and I think someone will like the size.  Now, that's a morning cup of coffee!

More to come.  I'm putting everything out at the booth today, so I'll have a lot more pics to share tomorrow!

Monday Mini-Ramble!

Not much time to chat this week.  Sorry about that.  Got a lot on the old plate at this moment, but I did want to give you all a couple of updates.

First, the good news.  At my treatment last week, the doctor told me that there is a meeting planned for May that will discuss the process for ending immunotherapy treatment for long term patients like me who are doing well and not having any problems.  One possibility is moving to bimonthly or quarterly treatments from the current every three week schedule.  Another is just ending treatment all together and monitoring with scans.  Exciting times.  Also, my nest scan is in a couple of weeks.

Now the bad.  Keith's brother passed away last week.  His mother is taking this really hard.  He had not been doing well for some time, but this was still kind of sudden.  We're heading to Oklahoma for the memorial service on Thursday, which puts me on a really tight schedule this week, especially since the booth is a wreck right now.

I had two items left to share from the freebie haul from the secondhand/vintage store.  Here they are.

These two caused me the most grief getting them in the van.  It was already quite full and they just would not go in the available space.  I was determined not to unload it all and repack, while Keith kept insisting that I would have to leave one behind.  Showed him!

So last week, I headed back over there and did it all again.

What was I supposed to do?  It was the last day, and they had a whole room full of free stuff! 

Retro Y'all (Black History Month Edition)

I probably should have done this one closer to Valentine's Day, but whatever.

You know those songs that instantly turn you back into a teenager in high school, reliving all the agony and ecstasy that is adolescent romance?  It seems that many of mine were sung by Lionel Richie.

The first one is long, but it's a threefur, plus bonus Soul Train stings.





Yes, I sang along with all three of these.  At the top of my lungs.

Don't even ask if I got weepy.  Hell, I cry at cat food commercials.

Vanload of Freebies (Part II)

Wrapping up from yesterday....

The handle on the saw is split.  The metal vase is not as old as it looks.

Bad shot composition here.  There's a wire basket that you can't really see in the back.  The black thing is a metal drawer without a bottom.  I think it would be a cool planter.  I thought the round thing was a crock when I first saw it, but it doesn't have a bottom.  It's pretty clear it was made that way and not broken, so it's a pipe of some kind?

VHS tapes of old movie serials.  There are a bunch more of these.  I put them in the nerd booth.

I love the metal stand.

The concrete thing is a cute little bird bath.  I love finding so much great yard and garden stuff right when people are starting to think about such things.

And that's (almost) the haul! I realized when I was working on the pics that I forgot to get pics of two large items.  I'll have to throw those in tomorrow's post!

Vanload of Freebies (Part 1)

So let's start unloading that Mazda load of free stuff from Monday.  Like I said, I had to leave the ladders on the Mount of Sorrows for the moment.  I am working on making a spot for them at the booth this week, so I can haul them over soon.  There were also two containers of smalls left in storage, because I am up to my armpits in smalls everywhere right now.

I'm going to go ahead and reuse Monday's ladder pic anyway, so I can draw attention to the black wooden screen frame that was also part of the haul. You can see it peeking out from behind the ladders.  Shy little thing.

I'm also trying to give Donna ladder envy again.

Like I mentioned on Monday, a lot of the van was filled with boxes of books, plus a box of records.

The nice thing about stuff that comes in milk crates is that you can sell the crates too!

There was also this vintage Underwood electric typewriter, which is quite heavy. And an old adding machine, which is even heavier.  Typewriters don't stay with me very long, so grabbing it was a no brainer.  I used to never, ever find old typewriters, but these last couple of years, I'm practically tripping over them.

The adding machine is missing all the buttons except for these two, but I couldn't leave it behind.  It's got such a sweet old look to it.

 The books were mostly unremarkable--good stuff, but not worth taking up blog space.  I was kind of needing some too.  I've been selling a lot of them lately.  There was one worth mentioning here, this collection of recipes from the local paper, which was published in 1970.

Cissy Gregg is a well known name around here.  She wrote recipes for the Food section of the paper for years and years.  In the 50's and 60's, the paper put out special supplement sections that collected her recipes. I'm always on the lookout for them.  I love having local interest items for sale.

The records were mostly show tunes, but there was one special album that I am saving for its own post.  It'll be a "Retro Y'all" some time in March.

So that takes care of the main core of the haul, but there's still some more to come.  Check back tomorrow.

The Best Thing I've Ever Found

Well, to date anyway.

Junk set out is a lot like trick-or-treating.  You tend to remember which houses are the good ones.  Of course, they don't always deliver a fabulous trove of goodies, but the odds are more in your favor when the house has a good junk reputation.

After a while, you also get the feel for which houses consistently set stuff out early, which is helpful in planning your routes.  A good house that sets stuff out early is like extra icing on your cupcake.  Or something.

Which brings us to the house about five blocks from us that always has a huge pile of stuff that shows up two or three days early.  This year it was a total dud.  It was nothing but pieces of old paneling, ugly cabinets, and hunks of drywall--the downside of renovation junk.  Not a window or a door or anything even remotely interesting.  And no boxes of small stuff like past set outs either.

No this is not a story about this house, except to say that it broke my heart in 17 places this time around.  (Does anyone get that reference?)  This is a story about the house next door.

Someone at that house got clever and pulled a trick that I also like to use--putting all the metal stuff in a separate pile from everything else, so that the scrapper won't make a mess when they come through. It does work.  (So does sitting in the backyard and screaming "Clean up your mess!" at the scrappers.  I scared one to death one year doing that.  He hadn't seen me sitting there watching him make an ugly mess of my neatly stacked pile of stuff.  He cleaned it up.)

The non-metal stuff was all broken furniture and crap, but the metal pile was pretty cool.  Out of that one, I nabbed:

An old metal toolbox with a broken latch which would make a cool planter.  ALREADY SOLD
A really rusty cast iron skillet ALREADY SOLD
An old adding machine that looks cool, but doesn't work

AND THE BEST THING I'VE EVER FOUND:

It's a cast iron decorative seascape with cut outs in the form of clouds.  I cannot find anything else like it online, but I'm pretty sure it's a heating vent.

This is a closer look at the part with the lighthouse.  It's pretty detailed.  Many of the clouds kind of resemble the outline of Kentucky, which was what actually caught my eye first.  The vent was on the bottom of the pile and all I could see was the cut outs. I thought it was some kind of mold for Kentucky-shaped biscuits or cookies.  I was kind of shocked when I got it uncovered and saw what it was.  I've never seen anything like it, but I am kind of sheltered.

As far as I'm concerned, this one set the bar pretty high for future junk finds.  I can't wait to see where things go from here.

If anyone has any other/better info about this one, I am all ears.  My searches have turned up nothing, and I'm really just guessing about what it is.

So, this happened.

Junk set out week this time around was equal parts amazing, frustrating, and disappointing.  In the end, I got way less stuff than I usually do, but found some of the best things I've ever come across. Those stories will have to wait, however, since this is post is about something else.

Also, I'm pre-empting "Monday Rambles" this week.  I hope you don't mind.

Allow me to present:

THE MOTHER OF ALL MAZDA SHOTS!!!!!

The shoes and rug are Keith's

Side view

Other side view

View through the back

Yes, there really were two full size ladders in there.

There's a vintage/secondhand store that I used to have a booth in a few blocks from our house that's moving.  This is their last week of business at the old site, so I wanted to pop over there yesterday and see if there were any bargains.

Indeed, there were.  The best bargain of all, in fact.

FREE!

That whole vanload cost me nothing.  Well, except the three gallons of sweat that were expended in loading it all.

I think folks are starting to sort out stuff that they don't want to move, and we happened to arrive at the right moment. There was a HUGE bunch of stuff in the parking lot when we pulled up and the owners said it was all free for the taking.

So I took.

Most of the tubs are full of books, which I really need right now.  There's also a box of records that I kind of don't need, but what the hell.  There really weren't that many smalls, but there was an awful lot of very timely stuff--planters, bird feeders, etc.  Spring is right around the corner!

I had to drop the ladders at Sorrow Mountain for the moment, but the rest of it is booth bound tonight.  I'll get some more pics when it's unloaded there.  I didn't want to haul it out and put it back.  I'm lazy that way.

By the way, this is Finds Week.  Enjoy.

TOMORROW:  The best thing I have ever found at junk set out.

Retro Y'all (Black History Month Edition)

This was the Homecoming theme at my high school the year it came out.

Retro Y'all (Black History Month Edition)

Monday Rambles

THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND

My glasses broke the other day, so I'm back to wearing contacts, which I haven't done regularly in years.  I've kept my prescription up to dote, but I've gotten to the point in life where I want getting ready in the morning to be as easy as possible, so the hassle of contacts has been just one more thing to do that I don't really want to and so I haven't.

The nerd glasses didn't really go with the longer hair anyway.  They'd work if I were planning to actually go the man bun route, but I feel like I am too old and fat for that.  I'm actually working on more of a loose, hippie ponytail.  I think little, gold-rimmed specs would look better with that.

Without my glasses, I think I look like my mother with a goatee, which kind of makes me nostalgic for my childhood days with the carnival, when I would watch Mom primping and combing her beard before going on stage to do her act is kind of unnerving.  Even worse, Keith keeps telling me how much he likes the way I look without the glasses, and in the back of my mind, a little voice is going, "He thinks your mother with a goatee is hot."  I think I need therapy.

FROM THE MOUTHS OF BABES

I had a great conversation yesterday at the mall with a 12 year old boy looking for Spider-Man comics.  He told me he was looking for "older ones."  I said "Old for you?  or Old for me?"  He had to think about that for a minute, then told me he meant 90's.  Old for him, then.  I told him to keep checking back and would do my best to find some.

I actually do need to carve out some time for a bad movie/comic bagging marathon.  I've been selling a lot of those boogers lately.

SPEAKING OF THE BOOTH

It feels like tax season is finally upon us.  Sales are picking up all the time.  The weekends have been gold rush city of late.  Saturday was my second best day ever.  The gravy is flowing and the small furniture is flying out of the door. So is the pricier stuff.  Saturday some dude came in and bought all of my vintage metal lunchboxes.

IT'S JUNKER CHRISTMAS!

This is junk set out week for the next neighborhood over from us, which means that we are next.  We've already got an early start on our set out pile going.  You're not supposed to do that, but my neighborhood ain't much on rules.  It's the first time we've ever tried it, though.  Watch us get cited for it, while the folks down the street who have had the nasty couches sitting on the curb for a MONTH, get by with nothing.

I made two "practice runs" last night.  One to a pile in the other neighborhood.  Got some small stuff, but nothing notable, except for two old fishing poles.  The other stop was at the magical house down the hill that disgorges all kind of interesting stuff every set out period.  They always start early and will be putting out crap right up until the garbage trucks come.  Last night it was a bunch of old religious texts and prayer books.  SCORE!

There's also a new renovation dumpster on our street, two doors down from us.  I told Keith that it was like having junk delivery!

All this is to say: 

IT'S ON BABY!

MUSIC FOR MONDAYS

And finally, to set you on your way:  The Carolina Chocolate Drops!

Retro Y'all (Black History Month Edition)

All together now:

Sunshine!

Moonlight!

Good Times!

BOOGIE!!!

The Most Unusual Man in the World Says:

"I don't always take selfies,

but when I do, I drape myself in gold beaded garland."

Stay strange, my friends.

The Ugly Truth

Truly,

I am such a little ray of happy sunshine in the morning!

Despite all appearances to the contrary here, I assure you that I am neither drunk nor high in this pic.  Nor hungover.