Front Porch Sign Says Yard Sale

The front porch sign says yard sale... real estate sign says "sold"... family picnic table holds all that it can hold... on the grass and on the sidewalk, yeah there must be half the town... ain't it funny how a broken home can bring the prices down... Sammy Kershaw's "Yard Sale", from the 1991 album "Don't Go Near the Water".

Old school country, really. Its from Sammy's album "Don't Go Near the Water", debuting in 1991. It really is a little cheesy, but its pure, true country... the chorus says, "...They're sorting through whats left of you and me... paying yard sale prices for each golden memory... oh, I never thought I'd ever live to see... the way their sorting through whats left of you and me..."

The video is even better... poor Sammy watches his woman take her ring off, lay it on the table and slowly walk out. We see him just wander around the yard, watching people pay a few bucks each for all of the prized and cherished possessions of their marriage.

The video is here, but YouTube won't let me post it. Some crap about copyright infringement... whatever.

Anyway, this was all up in my mental jukebox this weekend as The Lovely Steph Leann and I raced around the house gathering up stuff out of The Cabana's depths, cabinets, closets and so on... we were invited by The Tebershaws to join in with their own yard sale... Tiffiany, the Tebershaw lady, is going to have herself a little baby, so she and Teber are working on clearing some space for a youngling. Gemini and Heather King recently downsized into a smaller habitat, so they had a bunch of stuff to get rid of.

I mean, its a yard sale. Stuff that you had five years ago, stuff that you held so dear and precious, stuff that you'd neeeeeeeevvvvvveeeerrrr get rid of (and I say this tongue in cheek, as typically I was the one that did just that very thing) suddenly, now, don't seem so important. Yeah, there was a few things I kept, for reasons here and there, but sifting through boxes, seeing stuff I hadn't since before we left The Casa de Pesos for The Cabana

You left two Sunday dresses in the backporch and on the line... lady just brought them to me, said she thinks they'll fit just fine... well, there goes the baby's wagon and the mirror from the hall... I'd better take just one last look before they take it all...

Anyway, here's a few snapshots from the weekend...


The driveway of The Tebershaws home, where we lined up three couples worth of stuff. It was kinda comical to begin with, as we actually had an "electronics", a "home decor", a "Christmas" and an entire table of picture frames, of which we sold nearly all of them.


I finally sold what remained of my home video collection. Yes, I do have a few irreplaceable videos here at The Cabana, but mostly, this was it. Back in 2004, The Lovely Steph Leann and I--both married in our late 20s, so we carried into the marriage numerous things that we suddenly had two of, like dishes, furniture, movies, towels and so on, of which I had to get rid of most of mine because hers was better--joined forces with Mikey and his wife Ashleia, and we had a yard sale. Mikey and I, tenants of The Deuce, probably owned at least 600 videos between the two of us, and both of us were jumping headfirst into the DVD revolution.

Well, that yard sale, The Lovely Steph Leann and I made about 700 dollars, Mikey and Ashleia made somewhere around 500, and probably half of both of our totals was videos. And we managed to sell several this morning, first at $2, then $1 per. Top left, you'll see my Monkees video collection, when I used to get a tape each month with three episodes of the serious. I was a diehard Monkees fan back in the day, and still am to some respect. Wookiee used to make fun of me. The "Abs of Steel", however... not mine.


The price sticker says 25 cents on it, but we taxed it much more. Its a great cup, though. Whatever you put in it, it looks great and smells great and seems awesome on the outside. What you actually get, though? Not so much. (I had a dozen of these rolling this morning...)


Not sure which couple this belonged to, but it seemed like a funny picture... a contridiction, if you will.


Gemini sold some boots that had been worn in Iraq, carrying with it geniune Iraqi dirt.


Not to be outdone, this kangaroo puppet is straight from Australia. Seriously. My friend Darlene brought it to me when she went there on missions... finally, though, 12 years or so later, it was time to let it go.

That's the problem with friends that go on missions and bring stuff back... you feel so obliged to keep it, because not only were they nice enough to think of you, but its stuff thats from... well, around the world. Scotty Latta brought us back a stuffed banana, while my little sister Ashley brought back some Chinese stuff from... China. We've still got them.

My most prized "missions gift" though is a hand carved mancala set from South Africa that my friend AmyAlex brought back years ago. She and I have lost touch, but I still have that set, and won't get rid of it for anything.

On another topic, The Lovely Steph Leann and I find ourselves... well, I "find" myself, she seeks it out... watching "Clean House" on, what, Oxygen? WE? Style! Yeah, that's it, Style... anyway, I preferred "Clean Sweep" on TLC, mostly because it amused me that a family show would sample "Blowin' Me Up With Her Love" by JC Chasez for its title tune, but "Clean House" is the same concept... in the show, usually around the yard sale time, the head designer appeals to the homeowner about a certain item, one that they just don't want to get rid of, because it holds a special memory of a loved one, often times deceased.

For me, this moment came when this woman picked up my dad's old camera.

It was a Minolta, with two lenses, and one of those flashes that towered above the camera itself, in a big column, and the flash faces out in a rectangle. It was in the case, still with the instructions, had been used maybe, four, five times, ever. Value of the camera when purchased, with all the accrutrements? At least $400. And here it was, some 23, 24 years after it had been bought, and almost 10 years since my dad passed, the camera sat on the table with a $20 price tag. And this woman dared to haggle me about the price. Actually, I had already marked it down to $10, so I didn't understand why this woman wouldn't pay the full ten, not bring it down more...

Of course, to her it was just an old camera, much like if I went to her house and spotted a 1987 edition of Univision Monthly on her table... to me, just an old magazine, to her it might contain a special story that means something, or perhaps her cousin was featured in a novella on that Thursday night or whatever... one man's trash...

So, she paid 7. I took the money, she put the camera strap on her shoulder, and she walked away. I stood, silently, watching the camera go down the driveway, disappear into a hatchback and drive away forever. With my right hand, I wiped away a little moisture in my eye (it was dusty in that garage, mind you) and then went out marking other stuff down, as it was getting later in the day.

MZ asked me later why I got rid of it, and at first, I didn't know... but I knew. It was taking up space. I was never, ever going to use it. It was so old, I wasn't even sure it all worked. And I've got mementos from my dad from before he died, so it wasn't as if this camera held a lock of his hair or something... it was... well, it was just a thing. And I'm okay with it being gone.


What I wrote on the box speaks for itself.


On top, kids, thats a Vee Cee Are... it stands for Video Cassette Recorder. Say it with me... Vee... Cee... Are... and below that is a DVD player that we only sold because we just bought a Blu Ray player.

I wanted to keep this one, and replace one upstairs in the guest room... this one here belonged to me, therefore, it was a better machine, and the one I wanted to replace belonged to The Lovely Steph Leann. And guess which one we still have, and which one we sold. Yup.


Was there any bigger misleading investment potential than that of Beanie Babies? The Lovely Steph Leann even commented that ten years ago, these things would go for a few bucks more than the 50 cents we were selling them for here.

So that was our yard sale, and our end of it pulled in about $230 or so. Course, to look in The Cabana's hallways and such, you wouldn't know that anything was missing... everything just collapsed in on itself to fill the now empty space.

"Oh, they're sorting through what's left of you and me... paying yard sale prices for each golden memory... oh, I wonder what you'd say if you could see... the way they're sorting through whats left of you and me...."

What I Was Going To Say Was

I was totally going to blog tonight about some random stuff... then I just got busy...

...what I was going to tell you was that I saw "Observe and Report" tonight at the $1 theater with Mikey. It was pretty terrible. It was a random (not in a good way) movie, it didn't go anywhere, it veered off into fifteen different directions, it wanted to be a comedy but still wanted to be taken as "smart" comedy, which it wasn't. Out of every character in that movie, including a usually reliable Seth Rogan's Ronnie, Anna Faris and several other "that guys" and B-listers, including Ray Liotta, the ONLY character in the entire movie I actually liked was that of Nell, the Cinnamon Bun stand worker, played by Collette Wolfe... otherwise, the movie was really lame...


Nell works at the Toast The Bun cinnamon place in the mall, and really the only likable person in this film.

...And after that, I was going to tell you this random story...

On the way over to the movie theater, I stopped at the Chevron across the street to get a few snacks to smuggle into the theater. Oh, stop it, you know you've done it before. Anyway, I had my iPod on, and was somehow listening to Puff Daddy (as he was known at the time) and The Notorious B.I.G. The song that had just come on my earbuds was "Hypnotize", so as I'm getting out of the car, I'm not thinking about it, and the words I'm actually saying aloud are "Biggie biggie biggie biggie can't you see, sometimes your words just hypnotize me..." But that wasn't all. As I entered the Chevron, I continued with, "And I just love your flashy ways, I guess that's why they so broke and yo' so paid..." A few funny looks from the brothers buying oversized cans of Budweiser and Molton made me realize that I, d$, am not the right guy to be emulating Biggie Smalls. I got my Peanut Butter M&Ms and my Yoo-Hoo and left right quick.

...I was also going to tell you I had a great conversation with another high school friend, this the sister of K Dub. Kelly! Kelli! Kelle! and I had been talking here and there a few times via Facebook, doing a little catch up, but only in short sentences, and tonight, we were actually able to chat a while. She's a great chick, and the cousin of The Clouds in My Coffee Official Samson High School Crush Julie Wise.


There's K-Dub on the left, Kelly! Kelli! Kelle! on the right. Perhaps Kel Dub might even, one day, get her own picture in the sidebar...

...I was going to mention that The Lovely Steph Leann and I have been busy little bees the last few nights, as we are preparing for a yard sale with our friends, the Tebershaws. Holy smokes, the crap we've managed to pull out of the closets and such. We've only been in The Cabana a little over a year, but we are finding stuff that five years ago, we couldn't bear to part with, while now? Gone. Let'er go.

...And with that, I was going to say that Tuesday night, we just took a break. Well, actually, we got started late. I don't know why, but the television was on the Biography Channel, and somehow we ended up watching the ABBA biography. It was awesome. By the way, their first song as a group was called "People Need Love", and they called themselves Bjorn & Benny, Agnetha & Ani-Frid. Well, this was cumbersome to say, to write and to work with, so according to Wiki...

In early 1973, their manager Stig Anderson, tired of unwieldy names, started to refer to the group privately and publicly as ABBA. At first, this was a play on words, as Abba was also the name of a well-known fish-canning company in Sweden. However, since the fish canners were unknown outside Sweden, Anderson came to believe the name would work in international markets. A competition to find a suitable name for the group was held in a Gothenburg newspaper. The group was impressed with the names "Alibaba," "FABB," and "Baba", but in the end all the entries were ignored and it was announced in the summer that the name "ABBA" was official. Later the group negotiated with the canners for the right to the name.[21] "ABBA" is an acronym formed from the first letters of each group member's name: Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid (Frida). The first 'B' in the logo version of the name was "mirror-image" reversed on the band's promotional material from 1976 onwards and became the group's registered trademark. The first time the name is found written on paper is on a recording session sheet from the Metronome Studio in Stockholm, dated 16 October 1973. This was first written as "Björn, Benny, Agnetha & Frida", but was subsequently crossed out with "ABBA" written in large letters on top.

Dude, I love me some ABBA, and am not afraid to admit it. I should do an entire post on this band, and might one day.

...I wanted to talk about "John Adams", the HBO Mini-series that The Lovely Steph Leann and I have been watching. We finished part 2 of 7, and already, its magnificent. Its just a wonderful piece of film thusfar, with Paul Giamatti as the title character doing a great job. It might just stolen out from under him, though, with Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin, who is hilarious and perfect at the same time. The big surprise? How much I love the character of Abigail Adams. I already dig on Laura Linney anyway, one of my favorite actresses, but her take on the strained and sacrificial wife of John Adams is nearly flawless.

...At some point, I was going to give a shout out to Mindy D'A. Got an email from her earlier today, a very thoughtful, considerate and surprising email. And I wanted to publicly say "Hey thanks. You're a sweetheart, to the max." And I'll answer that as soon as I come up with how I want to answer it. Hopefully, that doesn't tell you everything the answer might say, but it possibly does.

...I was also going to acknowledge that yes, its time for new music on the Clouds. And I promise, it will come soon enough.

...I was also going to tell you all that we'll be headed back to The Happiest Place on Earth on Wednesday! The Lovely Steph Leann and myself, along with our friends St'ray and C'ray, will be driving down on Wednesday, visiting the parks on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then headed back to Monday. We are really big fans of St'ray and C'ray, and look forward to hanging out with them at Magical Kingdoms!

So, with that, I don't even know if I'll have time to blog about any of this stuff...