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So Basically Fuck That #Buzzfeed “25 Toys Of The 80s Now Worth A Fortune” Article.

12 Aug

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This thing is not worth $1000. This bothers me *way* more than it should you.

So like yeah I know, this isn’t the first time Buzzfeed done an article like this (although the last time was way less over-inflated and ridiculous).  But like, I’ve owned (and still own; see above) like half the things in this recent list of nostalgic toys, and lemme be the first to pop your bubble on the dollar signs that may have rang up in your eyes.

Because the whole list is completely full of shit. Wanna know how I can tell instantly? Well, because of this:

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In case you’ve literally never been on eBay before, what we’re looking at is a Buy It Now price on an item that is not up for auction (hence the 20+day time left and no mention of bids). NONE of the items in the list are up for auction, in fact. These price tags tell us literally nothing. Believe it or not, you can ask for literally any amount on anything you want to sell on eBay; the price tag police aren’t going to beat down your door over it. But you know what happens when you ask for such an absurdly high price?

buzzfeed4^literally the same auction from the article

But don’t despair; it’s not that your precious childhood memories are worthless. They’re just… not worth *that* much. There’s all these shows on reality television now about collectors having their obsessions vindicated with tons of moolah as some sort of eccentric business acumen, but that’s really not the case for the professional (or even semi-professional) collector.

So here’s a more accurate view of what these things are worth on eBay right now:

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See, this is the SOLD price of a similar item (unboxed working Teddy Ruxpin with some of the books). That’s… not a bad chunk of change, to be honest, albeit around 10% what the article would have you believe. Here’s some of the rest:

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And damn if the article didn’t undersell this one:

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Now keep in mind, in the spirit of the article I’ve only been posting the highest price bid (or accepted) on the items in the condition shown in the article. THIS IS NOT THE AVERAGE PRICE. This is, very likely, more than you will get unless you have an established eBay account with tons of good feedback.

So don’t get your hopes up kid, but you still might make a few bucks.

But before I let you go, lets get back to that Garbage Pail Kid I mentioned owning. Buzzfeed says:

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whereas reality says:

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HOLY FUCKING RAT SHIT I’M PUTTING MINE UP FOR SALE OH SHIT WAIT. That shit is a PSA10. Lets be generous and give that card I’m literally holding between my fingertips in the open air a PSA5.

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Actually, that’s still not too bad. Maybe I will try to sell some more of this stuff.

Trans-Thermidorian Reaction: The Old-Guard Has Gone Full #TERF

1 Aug

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So here we are, in the throes of the burgeoning so-called “Transgender Tipping Point” or whatever, and Andrea James is riding in like Merlin de Theonville to say we’ve gone too far, carrying the guillotine-severed head of RuPaul (who I guess is Georges Danton) wedged tightly between her buttcheeks. Playing the part of Robespierre is, um, Jennifer Boylan? GLAAD?

Fuck I dunno. Momma didn’t raise me to write gender-bent historical fan fiction.

Anyway, last week Andrea James decided the best way to use her social platform as a trans activist was to compose new hit-piece du jour in Queerty (which I’m not linking to) claiming that trans women have *too much* representation. Um, ok. The piece was a bunch of tedious hand wringing pretending to be concerned about fair representation when in reality, any pretense of said concern is complete bullshit. It’s hard to take seriously a piece that argues that a non-trans heterosexual has more right to be involved in queer matters than queer folks.

But really, this sort of invective from Andrea James is unsurprising to anyone paying attention. I’ve been counting down for months til the day James splits open along her surgery seams, releasing hundreds of freshly-Naired TERFspiders afflicted with Harry Benjamin Syndrome spilling out everywhere… all of them screaming about how they are the “truest trans”, Highlander-style, if Highlander was directed by Don Coscarelli.

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And as you’d imagine the cooperation of TERFs with violent trans activists with a history of abuse like James, the finer details come out in the wash.

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So, a few months ago I signed a thing (which also resulted in the first time my name appeared in a Huffington Post article). Shortly afterwards all sorts of accusations came about what kind of person I must be for agreeing that Calpernia Adams and Andrea James are genuinely awful people (which I learned later was at least the second time such a thing was written). Everything from “newly minted queer” to (hilarious) accusations of homophobia and resentment of the drag community to being flat out called an autogynephile.thermidor14thermidor15 And it’s like, you got your backwards-ass pop radphlegm psychology flipped if you think I’m an autogynephile. By their standards, I’m one of those sad gay dudes that can’t hack it, having my fabulous faggotness medicalized out of me by evil Big Pharma. Hell, most actual TERFs pick this up pretty quick:

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A BLOO BLOO BLOO I’m contributing to the erasure of gender-non-conforming and gay men through transition by my assimilation into mainstream society as a Satan-worshipping anarchist trans woman noise musician-

thermidor2a wait what now?

Really; I’m pretty much the opposite of the caricature they present. I rarely use trigger warnings on my writing, I occasionally call myself a “f*ggot” and even sometimes “tr*nny” (tho anyone calling me that is welcome to GTFO of my life), and I enjoy all sorts of problematic entertainment (that I have the presence of mind to enjoy critically). I’ve been around gendering so long I still have copies of Melanie Speaks and Creating A Feminine Carriage that are nearly two decades old to show for it. It’s pretty safe to say that I still have a good relationship with the drag community (despite different perspectives). I’m pretty much the kind of person James and Adams are pretending to represent, but fuck that because a decade and a half ago women like them were sneering at me and calling me a “drag queen” like it was the worst thing in the world to be.

All because I have a different opinion than them on the “tr*nny debate”. Seriously. I swear to fuck all these lumbering old dinosaurs seem to think the most pressing civil rights issue the trans community faces is making sure people that aren’t trans can use that word.

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A little over two years ago, Cristan Williams declared the Death Of The Trans Separatist Movement, which may have been a bit premature considering the turn things are going. Hell, here in Portland the “New Narratives” cult (hey yeah I’m not linking to that either) is forming and spreading across social media. It was founded by Tumblr quislings GenderMinefield and SnowflakeEspecial, and apparently their first meeting drew a whopping eight people, which doesn’t sound like much until each of them create eight sock-puppet Twitter profiles to rhetorically fellate each other with.

Which is great because what we really need out there to prevent male violence is more self-righteous frothing trans women high on TERF Kool-Aid

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And of course this wouldn’t be a proper document of gross old problematic has-beens without bringing up the racist-ass Cummings couple… they of the *thousands* of completely inept looking Blogspot blogs:

hamonyouIncluding “Ham On You”, which I assume is some really-gross porn site

Recently they had a certain someone on their show

thermidor17the Comic Sans is such a perfect touch I can’t even

And here’s the part where you’d expect me to blah blah blah about giving a platform or whatever, but nah. These two are perfect together. As long as the rhetoric isn’t aimed at someone I care about, the only thing that bothers me about her doing her gender-crit song and dance is that it’s distracting from time she could be making more karaoke videos. I mean, I’m by no means a fan of the movement,

gendercrit12like, at all…

…but the fact that this exists is actually pretty amazing in it’s own way. But that could just be because I’m actually a terrible person that enjoys ridiculous social train wrecks.

I didn’t make it more than halfway through the video, however. Even my “transgender male masochism” has limits, apparently. Hell, I almost didn’t make it through the intro because Mark Angelo Cummings is literally the worst musician ever. His music sounds like Nickelback having sex with Nickelback on a pile of Nickelback Albums with Nickelback playing in the background. Painful.

The interview opens with one of her mean-spirited “parody” videos, mocking a certain teenage transfeminine person’s vlog. Mark immediately chimes in that he watches it all the time, laughing. So we’re already off to a marvelous start; with three grown-ass middle-aged adults openly mocking the efforts of a teenage queer person figuring things out at a confusing and painful time of life. These grown-ass middle-aged adults want to be seen as advocates and leaders in their respective sexual orientation and gender identity-based movements.

Truly marvelous. But that’s not even my favorite part.

My favorite part is when Jessica Cummings has some sort of an epiphany. Or maybe a stroke, I can’t tell. “I see all these trans women out there, and they know nothing about being a woman,” she notes, nodding mindlessly. “All they know is stereotypes!” she giggles coquettishly, bottle blonde head suddenly cocked provocatively to the side as her Valley Gurl accent intensifies.

Truly, truly marvelous.

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But what really makes this a brilliant piece of tragic comedy is how much the two just eat that shit up. I’m sure they’re all like, “that’ll show them newly minted queers!” as if they’re in on the joke. As if, as a heterosexual couple no matter how you slice the gender pie, they were somehow outside the crosshairs of her uneasy musings about the “heterosexual infiltration of the gay liberation movement”.

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At no point (that I saw) did they ever catch on. Marvelous.

thermidor11Clean your mouth out with soup. Um, ok bro.

Portland’s Goodwill Blue Hanger Is Mildly Terrifying.

28 Jul

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So like first of all, they don’t call it Blue Hanger out here; they call it “The Bins”. Sounds ominous as hell, right? “The Bins” could easily be the title of a Stephen King novel. Probably not a good one but hey, who even reads him anymore?

Anyway, the view from the bus stop as you try to figure out how the hell to get in there doesn’t help matters.

bluehanger3 is this a thrift store or a prison camp?

Now I’m kind of a veteran of the old warehouse outlet stores if I must say so myself. Many moons ago, back in Austin, I used to work as an assistant to a certain local eccentric doll collector (now successful actress). A chunk of every other work day was set aside to scour the outlet store for hidden treasure. It was a lot of fun, if a bit chaotic.

If you’re completely unfamiliar to how these outlet stores work, hold onto your butts… basically you buy stuff by the POUND.

bluehanger4fucking seriously

However, despite being pretty intimate with the concept and expectations, I wasn’t prepared for how fucking HUGE the place was.

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Now, you don’t go into a place like this without a strategy. I have a few personal surefire things I look for that make money. No I won’t tell you what they are, but you could probably guess. Certain small vintage electronics, stuff that college kids need that is overpriced as fuck in the campus bookstore, things like that. This time I figured I’d give a shot at acquiring unopened/unused printer cartridges since printer ink is the most valuable liquid on the planet and I wanna get a cut of that. While there I also took the time to take pics of certain things too…

bluehanger6sad, abandoned artwork

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hilariously obsolete electronics

 bluehanger8and of course a full size mannequin because wtf

I also managed to find a ton of cute clothes (but no dressing room so no pics, sorry) as well as a few particularly interesting things of note:

bluehanger9A nearly complete 1977 Captain America board game

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A copy of Animation Magazine with Beetlejuice-era Tim Burton on the cover

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a pile of painstakingly preserved letters/postcards from 100 yrs ago I may serialize

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and a Totoro backpack because Totoro backpack

It was a good haul overall, and I figure heading out here will be a regular thing for me. It’s just a little much to take in at once.

Maybe I was just out of practice.

Creepy-Ass Scrapbook Is Creepy.

12 Mar

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Found this odd little thing over at All Things Beautiful. The $25 asking price was pretty steep, but it definitely caught my eye. It was about 100 pages long, and nothing but near-contextless cut out magazine photos of babies and toddlers. But why tho?

To be honest, it kind of reminded me of the “Memory Lane” scrapbook from Misery. Creepy.

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Photos Of The Pleasant Valley Abandoned Golf Course

14 Feb

Sorting through old photographs, I came across these strange, creepy beauties I’d taken maybe 10 years ago. They’re from an abandoned putt-putt golf course in Austin off of Pleasant Valley, a few blocks from where I used to live. I’d fallen in so much love with the sad little decomposing forgotten bastion of another generation’s happiness that I’d weaved it heavily into the plot/imagery of the most recent issue of Why I’m Not An Artist. Apparently, you can actually visit this place currently without tresspassing (which is probably what I was doing back then), but it looks like they painted over everything so it probably doesn’t hold the same charm.

You can see more pics of the same place here.

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Be Still My Soft Femme Heart (All Things Beautiful Antiques).

26 Jan

I’m really hating winter out here in Portland. I hardly ever leave the house (even more hardly ever than I’m already prone to) because the outdoors are just too inhospitable for this born and raised Texas girl. I can’t wait for it to warm up again so I can explore. I did a little bit of it when I first got here, checking out downtown Gresham to check out small-town thrift stores as I do. And that’s where I stumbled across the antique store All Things Beautiful.

Definitely the place to go if you love frilly things and lacey things. So much pretty.

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Awesome Gory Re-purposed Ceramic Dolls.

17 Jan

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Art blog Hyperallergenic posted about an awesome collection of re-purposed ceramic dolls turned into gory nightmares created by artist Jessica Harrison. They were part of an exhibition entitled Body & Soul: New International Ceramics  at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

Methinks He Doth Protest Too Much (Literally).

13 Dec

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On Monday, the Daily Beast presented a portrait of Portland eccentric Grant Chisholm, local shop owner and street preacher.  And it’s like, I don’t wanna be the kind of girl that makes wild assumptions just because the science happens to back me up, but coooooooome on.

I mean, antique dealer by day, street preacher against the homosex at night? Compulsively attending gay events where there are naked people around in order to “judge” them? You couldn’t MAKE UP a better candidate for a third act gay reveal.