bowling trophy

bad sign?

bad sign?

Soviet kitsch

souvenirs of venice

ice cream weather

Many garage sales have music - a radio or boombox playing - but I don’t think I’ve been to a g’sale that had a dj before. Alex was spinning vinyl on a pair of Stanton turntables (covered in attractive woodgrain mactac) on a system he bought complete at a pawn shop. He’s not a professional dj but he does the occasional gig around town (he’s going to be at the Sugarbowl). Apparently he has a small but eclectic record collection. The music was mighty fine, as was the coffee from that big chrome perk. Sadly, no records for sale.

The next sale I went to - an estate sale in an old two story house - had plenty of records. Unfortunately they were of the Mrs. Mills singalong variety. Altogether I went to about half a dozen garage sales on Saturday. I didn’t buy anything but all were entertaining in their way. I also hit a few thrift stores at the end of the day. Since I know Value Village executives regularly scour my blog for marketing advice, I’ll offer this:

DON’T STACK YOUR RECORDS. It’s not good for them and it makes them very difficult to look through.

Yesterday while I was waiting for my prescriptions to be filled I slipped across the street to the Salvation Army store. There were almost no records (where did they all go? Surely no one bought all those religious records and Reader’s Digest box sets), but there was a nice selection of quirky, fairly recent CDs. At $1.99 per, they’re the same price as LPs at Goodwill and Value Village so I can see myself buying more thrift store CDs as the number of LPs I’m interested in continues to dwindle.

1. Jane Siberry: Shushan the Palace (Hymns of Earth)

I love Jane - so flaky, so insanely talented and creative. Maybe you know by now that she changed her name to Issa and divested herself of most of her possessions (are you there Madonna? That’s reinventing yourself). This 2003 album is Siberry’s last under her old name. A Christmas album of sorts, though I didn’t realize it until I read it somewhere. No Santa or chestnuts roasting on an open fire - instead hymns by Handel, Bach, Mendelssohn, Rossetti, Holst and others. I love Jane’s soaring voice and her slow, wobbly vibrato. After two listens, Jesus Christ The Apple Tree is the track that sticks in my memory: simple and lovely.

Bonus! It’s autographed. If that signature was any more stylized it would be a straight line.

Links: Website, MySpace

2. Various: Christmas Songs

I’ve been searching for this Nettwerk Christmas compilation for years because I need Meryn Cadell’s The Cat Carol for a disc of depressing Christmas tunes I’m putting together for my friends. It may well be the worst tear-jerker of a Christmas song ever: A cat is forgotten outdoors in a blizzard on Christmas Eve. A mouse creeps by, lost in the snow, almost frozen. The cat digs a hole in a snowdrift and curls up with the mouse, keeping it from the cold. Santa comes along and finds the cat frozen to death. He discovers the mouse still alive in the cat’s warm fur. Reindeer weep. Santa commemorates the cat’s sacrifice by turning her into a constellation.

Now I love Meryn Cadell, but I was appalled by this song the first time I heard it on the radio. It’s everything she’s not: mawkish, sentimental, cheap. I think I may be the only person in the world who feels this way - this song is much loved and requested.

Cadell is another peron who has radically reinvented herself; she kept the name but changed genders.

Links: The Cat Carol, blog

3. Aimee Mann: The Forgotten Arm

Aimee Mann is not someone I’ve listened to much (I saw Magnolia, that’s about it). I bought this CD because the packaging is so beautiful (you can do that when CDs are two bucks). Digipacs rule! The booklet looks like a pulp novel from the 40s or 50s with the lyrics of each song laid out like chapters. The gorgeous illustrations are by Owen Smith. It’s a concept album - a musical “novella” about a troubled couple who meet, fall in love and take a road trip across America.

click to enlarge

Also, I was thinking I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up For Christmas sounded like it might be right for my depressing Christmas comp. Aimee has a Christmas CD (who doesn’t?) but it looks too upbeat for my purposes.

Links: Aimee Mann. Owen Smith, more Owen Smith

Nothing says festive like balloons.

Sexy, saggy sixties sectional.

Souvenir of Saskatchewan:

Scores:

Chandelier. For G.

Yesterday I went condo hunting with my friend Lee. She came over in the morning with the daily papers and we circled some open houses. The first place we saw was a half-million dollar highrise penthouse with a stunning view of the river valley. But the best thing about it was dozens of scary clown paintings on the walls everywhere you looked! By freakin’ Red Skelton no less!!! I think they were original oil paintings - at least some of them (but I could be wrong). The condo lady had been friends with Skelton (or an acquaintance anyway) and there were autographed photos of him around the place, and pics of the two of them together. I was dying to take pictures of all the art because it was so weird and overwhelming, but I thought it would be an invasion of privacy. It was a nice place (if you could get beyond the clown art) but out of my price range.

This is where I want to live:

Eco-house in Old Strathcona: solar roof panels, geo-thermal heating, triple glazed windows, R28 insulation, a bicycle room(!), etc. etc. And way more styly than anything else we saw this day. Seven 2-storey townhouse units on the bottom floors and eight 1-storey flats on the top two floors. They weren’t having an open house, it’s just someplace we passed by on the way home. It’s still under construction and apparently all the units are sold already. Dammit.

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website

We also managed to squeeze in some thrifting (never too busy to thrift).

Lee with pixies.

What is this stuff called? I thought it was tole, but google convinces me that is wrong.

Oooh, 3-D!

An overeager donor turned the donation station into a drive-thru.

mother & child

Bobby Hull Hockey 

thrilla at goodwilla

Coolest Hawaiian shirt I’ve seen in some time. Too small, of course.

I discovered today that the tiny IODE thrift store across from the Value Village on Whyte Avenue closed. It didn’t have much stuff and the turnover was really slow, but it was dirt cheap, immaculately kept and the volunteers were really friendly. My favorite memory of this place: One time I found an uncharacteristic donation of prog rock LPs (Focus, Gentle Giant, etc.). As I was flipping through the stack of records, the elderly lady at the till excitedly told me “There’s a Jethro Tull in there!”