(more) adventures in big little antique malls

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Hadn’t been to the I-76 Antique Mall in years but I more than made up for lost time today:

The Dick Tracy Playing Card game (all cards present!) and Big Little Book date from 1934 and ‘35 (same as the Pop-Up book), respectively, and are in exquisite condition; The Shadow pulp (July 1944), has, on the other hand, clearly lived a life – but I’ve always wanted to own an original Shadow pulp. And, five bucks later, I did.

Bit of a theme with the last photo, but hey, I’m a sucker for secret agent stuff, particularly if they’re created by Ian Fleming and Dashiell Hammett (SECRET AGENT X-9 was not, unfortunately, written by Hammett - THAT would have been a find; G-MEN ON THE JOB was next to SECRET AGENT X-9 so I said what the hell).

Shelves… I need more… shelves…

links/2023w06.2

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up for air

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TIL: I'm incapable of moving on to the next bit until I get the right words for the current section / passage: any and all efforts to do otherwise are condemned to fuckall zilch, a wasteland of self-doubt, bruised foreheads, and spent dry erase markers.

Came into crystal this morning, when I decided, on a lark (the nothing left to lose varietal), to split a section and found that doing so was the opening (or, rather, the necessary expansion of rhythm) I needed to go deeper and give the words already written the space to breathe and become something more.

Lesson: even the most breathless passages need to breathe.

penguin commandos and gremlin vinyl

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In which an impromptu trip to an antique mall while killing time before going to the accountant’s office (taxtime, settling the final bit of my mother’s estate) yielded terrific and strange results:

O’Neil and Cowan’s THE QUESTION is high on the “have to get the whole thing” list. Among the group was my favorite issue so far, the sixth, “… that small rain down can rain…,” which remains brutal every time I read it.

And who could pass up die-cast Penguin Commando and Duckmobile?

Nevermind the GREMLINS story record… I mean, come on.