11/11/2008 - Amvets Elvis Presley Blvd

hi all - welcome back to bitter/books, trying to catch up on the backlog of accumulated photographs and weird thoughts i've been sitting on for the past month or so while every friend and relative i've ever wanted to see comes to town to visit. it's been fun, y'all, make no mistake, but lord are we ever tired. but, as they say, the thrift must go on.



in this week's inevitable caravan towards madness we went back to the amvets on elvis presley boulevard. it was beautiful. i can see why it's my wife's favorite thrift store in town. it swept us all off our feet, which is unfortunate because this week we brought a guy in a wheelchair, who made us all feel bad, seeing as he was already swept off his.

just kidding. i would never hang around with someone in a wheelchair. what a downer!

just kidding again



as the sign says, the amvets welcomes all, just as i welcome all to this blog, regardless of age, race, creed, nationality, disability, permeability, sustainability, transubstantiation, transmogrification, trans-canada highway...you name it, you're all welcome. as long as you're not this guy



they always have a lot of neat kids books here, including (nearly every time i've visited) one or two selections by this gentleman, either under the pen name "theo lesieg" or as you may know him, one Dr. Seuss. yes that's right folks and kids, for some reason Dr. Seuss (born Theodore Geisel) felt compelled to publish under a pseudonym for a while, apparently before he had the cojones to come out as a full fledged lunatic and publish books like "On Beyond Z" and his earlier offerings are everywhere, usually illustrated by Bennet Cerf or other capable but unremarkable guys like the Roy McKie that did this one, you know what, they're still worth picking up, because a rose is a rose and dr. seuss will always be dr. seuss.



oh dear. at the time i thought this was hilarious but now i really really wish i hadn't taken these pictures. ladies and gentlemen on behalf of the whole bitter/books organization i must sincerely apologize for the images you are about to witness. the fact of the matter is that simple curiosity pulled me into a situation that i could not truly understand until it was far far too late. i have been to a place that i can never fully return from and, now, dear friends, i am going to take you there with me. this, in two short snapshots, is "I'm Made of Mama's Milk," by one Mary Olsen.



ugh. not so bad though right



UGH AAAGH AAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH UUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAok i guess you get the point



her website is long gone but this page remains. every once in a while i like to go look at it, just to remind myself that i'm not alone. feel free to do the same. who knows, maybe we can take the damn thing over and turn it into a support group



i wish that champagne made my nights this awesome. usually it just makes me burp



old gregg?







this place really is amazing. great full sets of furniture, as per usual. cheap, too...and enigmatic! check this out



perhaps someplace to hang your jacket on WHO KNOWS ONLY TIME WILL TELL



aspiring serial killers...need someplace to buy your body-disposing-of tools without attracting a bunch of needless attention? amvets on presley has just the thing for you - CHEAP BONE SAWS



aspiring money launderers...need a way to count your ill gotten gains without attracting a bunch of inattention from the useless dumbfucks that work at officemax when all you needed were some god damned index cards how fucking hard could that possibly be to just keep out on a shelf where someone can see them i mean for christ's sake does no one even USE the damn things any more?

jesus what was i saying oh yeah amvets on presley has just the thing for you - CHEAP MONEY COUNTERS



at the risk of using the capital letter gag a little too much i gotta play another round of

WOULD

YOU

BUYIT!!!!!?!???!?!?!?!???!?!?!?!??!?!?

with y'all. here's the second ancient macintosh i've seen in as many visits to thrift stores, and just butt-ass-cheap like the other one. same problems as before, but god when you see two of these things in a row like this you just have to believe (if you're a superstitious cave person who is afraid of mobile telephones, like me) that it has to mean something, somehow

once again i did not buy it



i think this thing would pay for itself real damn quick if you went out on like second and peabody and just stood around for long enough. of course you would need a very very long extension cord, depending on where you lived. maybe i could buy it and put it in the bathroom of the p & h. oh god wait no...i think it would get used for all the wrong things.

or all the right things?



substitute this device for the previous one in all the jokes i just made and i think they get EVEN FUNNIER

also it looks like a transformer



one advantage that the amvets on presley has over almost any other store in town is that it's unbelievably huge, fairly well kept, and in such a nasty weird mixed up part of town that lord only knows what will come through on any given day. case in point. these banks of filing cabinets assuredly came from some industrial business or commercial office that operates nearby, and the store is so huge and funky that of course they won't turn them away, and it's so far out of the way and scary that your usual thrift store vultures (read: professional junk dealers and trust fund hipsters with too much money to spend) won't touch it, so here you are, average people who just want 14 stacks of file cabinets (or just want to photograph them, in my case)...as you like it.



what the hell was this for? sewing? something like that? god i gotta stop waiting so long between taking these photographs and writing about them. jesus i thought this thing was cool but now i cannot remember why. is it a picnic basket? 8 tracks? what the hell is it for? sewing. i think it's sewing. is it sewing?



i found these in it. someone call valerie weed and ask her what this thing is for. i would do it but i'm scared



if you want to look like a badass bowler but you don't actually bowl all that well, AND you love coffee...OR you know someone who fits either of those descriptions...



i TOLD you! i TOLD you santa claus was black! now will someone finally believe me? kris kringle was a brother and apparently so was ebeneezer scrooge.



i had one of these



as i've said earlier, nothing more enjoyable than a christian board game



except of course this, which might as well be called "scream at the tiny ball as it rolls into the hole AGAIN, and again and again and AGAIN AND AGAIN, then scream at your parents when they come into the room to find out what the hell you're screaming about, then scream at the police and and the ambulance and the emts as they come to sedate you and take you away to a locked, padded room where you will sit for a very very long time until you forget about balls and holes altogether"

sometimes i hate board games



finishing up, i should just say that if you have a few bucks to spare and some extra time on your hands (not that any of us really have either of those at the moment, but just suppose) i would highly recommend that you pick up one of the cheap, readily available, marginally functional vcrs that line the shelves of nearly every thrift store in town, and do yourself a favor and go hunting through the stacks to find some of the amazing bargains. this picture, by the way, is not one of them. highlander completely blows



i did however find "Radar Men From The Moon," a Bugs Bunny Movie, and a homemade MST3K tape that still had all the commercials on it, from 1993, 2 bucks each! AWESOME!



HELL YEAH!

d