Best Things Found at the Thrift Store Today

1. A Stuart Smalley Pin (Large Size: lots of writing)

2. A Greenies (Dog Biscuit) t-shirt. Awesome design front and back.

3. 3 Ertl Trucks (cast iron banks) from the Early Nineties in original box (Lee can resell)

4. The gayest FUBU shirt (pink) I have ever seen

5. An Encyclopedia of Superstitions

6. Russel Wright cups/plates

7. Two large bags of magnets from all across the U.S. and Mexico, including some very stylish ones--like a handcarved petroglyph on shale from out west---and a Japanese child made out of different types of Japanese fabric from the Japanese Pavilion at the one World's Fair. Someone (a woman's handwriting it appears) had obsessively recorded the date on which every magnet was purchased and the exact location including store name. This was written on a piece of masking tape laid across the back of each magnet. The magnets came from virtually every state in the Continental U.S. I have the horrible feeling this person and her husband both died and this is their testament. It's like holding a Kawabata short story.

8. 41 articles of clothing for a dollar each including many with original store tags. Nice nerdy Van Heusen work shirts, nice Urban Up shirt, a sort of ugly but hugely comfortable and plush Christian Dior bathrobe. A perfect fit pair of jean. I never try anything on in the store. I just buy them and if they don't work I redonate them. All the money goes to people in need. As for articles of clothing, I bought everything but a muu-muu. Not really. You can never buy shoes in those places. They're always horrible. I couldn't imagine finding a wearable suit in such places. Napoleon Dynamite might disagree with me. But as shirts and pants go, Cowabunga! Good tennis wear for Lee. Lots of tees for the kids. I can pretty much nail what they're going to like. Spring is almost here so I got more spring/summer things but a few winter items were too good to pass up for next year. Nobody knows about this store yet because it is still so new. I was one of three shoppers in the store with about fifteen employees on shift. They were so entertaining to watch and listen to because the average age is probably 23 and they are people in recovery mostly and the tensions are high and everybody is fucking everybody else and that means people are ornery. Because it's like 70 percent women. And they bicker constantly. It was like being in the center of a strange play, as I shopped quietly for like two hours or more. I guess they gauged me as "safe old guy" rather than "scary nark guy" since they carried on right around me, occasionally stopping to offer assistance to show that they were "real employees." Before going right back to their "Ohnoiknowyoudidn't" mode with each other. I heard three objects shatter to bits on the ground during the revelry in the unloading room. It was a hoot. The manager had no power over these people at all, though she mouthed sententiae periodically like an employees' manual. And the employees laughed like hell everytime she did. I think she is fucking the one handsome black man she kept lecturing. He's ten years younger than she, and walks with the strut of a Tennessee Williams rooster.

9. A stuffed prairie dog plushie with the original store tags and a tag that reads "I HAVE MOVEABLE PARTS." I thought unnervingly of Amanda Lepore. "It's not your mother's vagina."

10. The strangest T-Rex in a Bowler Hat. Made out of some strange lustrous fabric and emblazoned with a pattern more suitable for a Trans-Am hood than an extinct therapod.