062621 • Thrift Store Finds

Well, a few weeks after declaring that thrifting wasn’t a thing we were going to do anymore (because there’s no more room for my libraries to grow, and Dad was trying not to buy stuff anyway), we hit four thrifts this week as he was looking for something particular for a certain price. Two things, actually, and we found one of the two. But I’m not going into a thrift and leave behind some good finds! I think we’ll be back on the wagon after this trip!

What a great batch of books, and every single one was half-price! Usually I have to put a bunch of full-price books back, because they put those out in anticipation of Half-Off Saturday. These are all great, but The Battle for North Africa is the one I’m interested in most of all. The campaigns there are a subject I don’t know that much about. I’d be okay reading any of them at any time. That’s the problem with my library, there aren’t any weaker books to weed out.

The Grieg: Lyric Pieces by Leif Ove Andsnes was a nice find, since he’s one of the pianists I collect and actually make a point to listen to.

The two Bach: The Keyboard Concertos discs are items I’ve seen before and wasn’t able to get; I collect Angela Hewett’s recordings but don’t specifically listen to her like I do Hélène Grimaud, but I do listen from time-to-time and always wanted these particular recordings. Amazing that I found them at a thrift!

I have many renditions of Brahms’ A German Requiem, but it was a favorite of my Mom, and an amazing work anyway. Everybody should have a copy.

All of these were only two bucks apiece… and all but Ronin was still in the shrink-wrap! None of these are filler, either… Cliffhanger is one that I re-watched a few years ago, and I’d forgotten how good a movie it was.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I’m not a Star Trek fan, but the originals are things I can watch and enjoy as I grew up with them. (Except Star Trek 5 and 6, my interest stops after #4). The original series is great! ST: TNG, Deep Space Nine and Voyager are really hit-and-miss, and I stopped after a few episodes of Enterprise. Since then I’ve sampled what has come out since, and wow. It’s like every franchise out there, not just Trek, is being run by people who just don’t understand what they are dealing with. They have great music, special effects, acting, props, costumes, design… and there can be great scenes and ideas (Force Awakens‘ Tie Fighter chase of the Millennium Falcon, abandoned Star Destroyer wrecks, for example) but the stories are awful and packed with social politics on top of that. I’ve learned not to get too upset about it as there are far bigger issues to deal with in life, and a lot of other things to be doing than getting all upset that people are ruining movie and television franchises. It’s just the way things are.

Ronin is one that slips through the cracks… it’s actually a really good movie. The car chases are fantastic, and by fantastic, I mean Jade and Bullitt kind of fantastic, not Fast & Furious fantastical. Plus, De Niro. I watched this one tonight!

USS Indianapolis is one of those movies like Greyhound that I was just waiting for to arrive at a good price, except I’d forgotten about it. I know that the actual ship USS Indianapolis has an amazing story, I have a few books about it, but I really have no idea what I’m going to be seeing. Looking forward to watching this one soon!

Jason Bourne leaves only one Bourne movie left to finish the five-movie set for me… I need #4 (the one without Matt Damon) and I’ll be good. I last watched the first three movies a few years ago, great series! Interesting how it is an action/spy kind of movie, like John Wick or The Equalizer (Not the new series with ‘Queen Latifah’, I’m talking about the two movies with Denzel Washington) yet, like those, it is it’s own thing entirely. (The new Equalizer is one of those franchises that isn’t being rebooted very well. Wow. It is so bad!) I watched the original Equalizer with Edward Woodward back in the day, and that is one of my favorites from back in the day that I still don’t have on physical media.

Century-Old Drawing

Recently came into possession of a more than century-old drawing of my grandma Rydberg, before she came to the United States from Hungary, before the Great War (World War I).

I did some really quick Photoshop Healing Brush and Stamp tool work on it so that there are two versions, a beat-up version and a touched-up version. At some point I’ll do some more detailed work on it.

Very glad to have this.

Done with Thrifting

I don’t like thrifting; There are hordes of rude people, narrow isles, people in my way (how dare they!), crowded parking lots, (Saturday is half-off day, so it’s packed) traffic, etc.

So why have I been doing it? My dad and I go (went) every week and also stop for lunch at our favorite restaurants, such as Culver’s or the Wishbone. That’s always a good time, and I have to admit, with thrifts, the thrill-of-the-hunt is a big draw, something that helps me deal with all of the annoying things that thrifting inflicts. There are so many good books, cds, and DVD/Blu-ray out there, and one never knows what one will find. Sometimes, there’s nothing, but often, there are some fantastic deals on items I never would have run across anywhere else.

But after maybe about five years of this, (was it longer than that? Maybe?) I’m just out of room. I’ve purchased some fantastic libraries, which is great, but the next step is to start stacking books on the floor. I’ve done that before, and I really don’t like it. Books should be on shelves, not in boxes or stacked on a floor. I already have a few boxes of cds on the floor of my office, which isn’t something that I want going on. But there is literally nowhere else to put them. And every week, I’m getting more in that I have to catalog and sort, and that is time that I’m not using to actually enjoy what I have. This constant thrill-of-the-hunt finally has to come to an end. Which is sad. But my libraries are at a very good place, with plenty of varied options to read, hear, and watch.

It was a good time for a long time, but now we’re just going to go out to lunch and take care of errands on Saturdays. And then home for a quiet Saturday afternoon of reading, instead of dealing with the new acquisitions. I read on Saturdays now, but it’s going to be nice to be doing less at my computer in cataloging new buys when I could be reading on any given quiet Saturday afternoon.

And I will also admit that I very much understand why people pack their houses with collections of stuff; that thrill-of-the-hunt is a lot of fun, but at some point one has to stop and assess where their boundaries should be with collecting.

When I was a kid, I used to have this stack of comics that I would read every day, and when I read the comic on top, I’d transfer it to the bottom, and so on until they rotated back to the top. Every once in a while, I’d get a new stack of comics at the flea market, and that was always a huge deal; my point is that I didn’t have much, but I really used what I had.

And video games back in the day; I didn’t have an Atari, everybody else did. So any time I could get playing a friend’s Atari, Colecovision, Odyssey 2, or Intellivision, that time was gold. When I did get my Atari, the Nintendo was released, and although I could play it all of the time at my cousin’s (good times!), he only had a few games, so we played those over and over, even if we couldn’t get anywhere with them. It’s what we had. And it was a good thing, because we’d have never beaten or eventually enjoy them if we’d been inundated with lots of choices. Again, the point of that story is that one doesn’t have to have a great big library; it’s nice, and there’s nothing wrong with having a good library, but what good is it if you don’t use it? It’s just stuff on a shelf if it’s not used.

Everybody should be reading a book on Saturday afternoons.

Frasier, again.

I watched Frasier when it originally aired back in the day, recording it on VHS every week. Eventually, I pieced together the entire eleven-year run on DVD from local used media stores and watched them all again, and then perhaps about five years ago, went through them yet again. And then last year. This sounds like a lot, but it comes out to once every five years.

I’ve recently been under-the-weather, and at the same time, the NHL playoffs have been on cable, something I stopped watching entirely back in October. I needed (and this is part of why I’m not watching cable anymore) to flip to something during the numerous commercial breaks, and Frasier was the only thing even vaguely appealing, even though I watched it last year. I got hooked again, as I had to stop watching the commercial-ridden, logo-obstructed, soft quasi-HD offering and instead started up my DVD copy of the show.

Which is the beauty of physical media; I can watch this whenever I want, commercial free. Although the video quality isn’t that great by today’s standards, it is better than the current cable option.

Going through and watching my favorite shows again on DVD/Blu-ray has been a good time, and it feels great to have the control over what I’m watching, not wasting time flipping channels, recording, going through menus, etc.

I have a buddy who is a big Cheers fan; but he won’t even try Frasier, much less Wings. Which is too bad, because Frasier isn’t just a continuation of Cheers, it keeps getting better since it is mostly the same people involved, and they have all of that accumulated experience making these shows.

And while I’m not a writer or an actor, I can tell that the writing on this show is so much better than everything that is new these days, and that is before Kelsey Grammar’s fantastic portrayal of Frasier Crane with all of his eccentricities. There’s nobody like him, or his character. Actually, the show has double the Frasier Crane, since his brother Niles is so much the same, yet different enough to compliment the character of Frasier and make Frasier more interesting.

It’s just a great show. And I’m getting so much mileage out of my DVDs. Most physical media, if ever used at all, gets watched once and then becomes part of a collection or library, forever, because the thrill of the hunt for new things to watch totally wastes what is right in front of a person; something they know they like, that would be fun to watch again, but no. Gotta go find some new stuff.

When at thrift stores, looking at the DVDs, it is really interesting to see how many of them are still in their shrink-wrap, some of them decades old and never used. Most DVD’s at thrifts are in perfect condition; there are plenty of scratched-up ones, but the majority are like new. I often see great series like 24 or Frasier there, a season for just $1.50-$3.00. So much great entertainment for practically nothing, but they just sit there because people overlook them in the search for the newest thing, and usually that newest thing is quite sub-standard in comparison.

Anyway, I’m having a blast re-watching Frasier yet again, and I highly recommend not just this show, but your own favorite show, whatever it is, that you already own; don’t let it just sit around, give it another watch! Because if you don’t, you might as well give it to the local thrift.