"It's like Halloween for grown ups."

We did our bit to help the folks on the Tree Streets make their mortgage payments this month by buying some stuff at the annual Tree Streets yard sale.
I'll give you a full report with more scintillating action packed photos later and of course there'll be more photos of the event on my Flickr account as well. But now our whirlwind day continues and we're off to some friends house for supper.

My name is Dr. Monkey and I'm a vintage magazine addict

Have you ever driven by a store for years and years and said to yourself that one day you'd stop in and see what they had for sale at that store? Well today was the day that we stopped at "that" store. For us "that" store was an antique/flea market store just off Interstate 26 just outside of Erwin.

Let me tell you people, this joint is a wonderland of a store that's stuffed full of everything.
It's got all kinds of knick knacks, odd food items, junk, and most every kind of this and that ever made. But for me the best thing about it is it's got tons of vintage magazines and paperback books. But these aren't the usual vintage magazines that you find in stores like these, the usual being scores of Life, Look, Newsweek, and Time, no siree. I found a bin full of 1950's era Vogue magazines, two of which I bought.Is that not a wildly cool cover? We're going to frame it soon and hang it in our new place. The great old mags didn't stop at just Vogue, I also found a Punch magazine from 1953. It's chock full of great British cartoons and ads and I may end up framing that cover too.

Earlier in the day I bought these magazines at an antique store in Erwin for a dollar each:

I actually got three Argosy's. Two of the Log, which was a magazine put out by the Naval Academy.And finally I bought this copy of True.

These purchases would not have been so bad if I had not bought those vintage mags yesterday, which I blogged about here. I'm staying out of antique and thrift stores for the mext month. Maybe. I swear.

Conversations at a shoe store

Here's part of a conversation I had with a five year old girl at a local shoe store today, her mother was sitting behind me trying on shoes while the young lady and I talked:

Me: (After seeing her give the stink eye to the style of shoe that I was lacing up and getting ready to try on.) What?  Do you think it's ugly?

Little Girl: (Nodding.)  Yep.  It's real ugly.

Me:  You know what?  I think you're right.  I was wavering on whether to buy this style or not.  

Little Girl:  You don't supposed to wear that kind of shoe in summer anyway. (I was looking at hiking shoes.)  You is supposed to wear flip flops or sandals only.

Me:  Oh ok.  (I looked down and noticed that she was barefoot.)  Are you here to buy shoes too?

Little Girl:  Nope.  My brother is getting some football shoes.

Me:  You better get some shoes too, yours appear to be gone.

Little Girl:  Oh no, I wore my sparkly sandals and I took them off over there.  (She pointed to a little pair of sandals next to her mother's purse.)

Me:  Oh ok.

Her Mother:  Lexi, get over here and put your sandals on young lady, we need to go now.

Me:  (To the little girl.) It was nice chatting with you.

Little Girl:  You too.  Don't buy those ugly ones, okay?

Me:  Okay.  Thanks for looking out for me.

Little Girl:  (With a huge smile.)  You're welcome.

Spotted while shopping

I love this old board game, you know it's an antique because it has two white players on the cover and the word 'swish' displayed prominently on it, but I didn't love it enough to buy it:
I have an inordinate fondness for fake food and yet I purchased none.
I almost bought this plate with zombie Ike and Mamie on it, but since I am not a Reichpublican I hung on to my money.
However I did purchase an issue of National Geographic from 1946 and it's chock full of crazy ads and cool old photos which will be showing up here, on Flickr, and on Monkeyscan.

Over the hill and through the woods...

...to the lovely city of Asheville we go to today! Sparky will be heading out soon to make our monthly trip to the progressive oasis across the mountain. We've got a full day planned for over there so there won't be much blogging here today I'm afraid.

What's that? What do we have planned? I'm glad you asked! Here's some of what we'll be doing:
We'll be parking in one of the lovely urine scented downtown parking garages and then we'll walking around and shopping in the downtown area. We'll be hitting all the little funky shops, especially 10,000 Thousand Villages and other stores like it. We'll also be hitting a used bookstore or two so I can search for vintage kid's picture books and or cheesy cheap pulp paperbacks.


One thing we won't be doing however is stopping at the downtown Salvation Army Thrift store.

And that's because those Christian bastards up and moved out and they haven't told me where they moved to. The downtown store was where I bought We Live In East Germany, the scan of which got me on Boing Boing, the bowling pin I have in my home office here at el Casa de Monkey, and numerous vintage album covers that ooze cheesy goodness. One of these days I'll find out where you Jesus lovers ran off to and then I exact my revenge!


On a happier note, we'll also gander at the latest fashions in Asheville.

We'll also mix, but not mingle, with the locals.

And we'll enjoy whatever the street performers are up to today!

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We'll also squeeze in a late lunch or supper out and we'll fit in a visit to one of the two mainly organic grocery stores in town, Greenlife Grocery. (Sorry Earthfare, you guys can suck it. I'm tired of your cashiers giving me the stink eye because they think I look like a Republican with my short hair and glasses.)

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We always have fun over in Asheville and yes, I'll be taking my trusty HP digital camera so expect photos later! Have swell day boys and girls and if you promise to be good while I'm gone, I just may pick you up something while I'm out, for all our sakes I hope it's not an STD.

Who ordered the big ass coffee?

Was it you?

Cooking with Dr. Monkey

Today's episode: Well, not really, actually today's episode is lower fat macaroni and cheese! A while back my blog buddy the fabulous genius Miss Whiskeymarie posted her version of this dish and I had another heart attack just from reading the recipe. So in the interest of providing fair and balanced food coverage I now present my lower fat version. I got this recipe out of a low fat cook book we bought after my quadruple bypass surgery.
First off I put the macaroni on to boil. I used about half this bag.

Next I sauteed half an onion, some red bell pepper, a table spoon and a half black pepper, and three small cloves of garlic in two generous tablespoons of Brummel and Brown spread.

Next I shredded 3/4 cup of muenster. I then measured out 3/4 cup of mozzarella. After my onion mix had cooked up a bit I added three tablespoons of flour to the saute pan. I quickly added two and a half cups of fat free milk the pan and then I tossed in the cheeses. After I stirred the cheeses around in the pan I added two table spoons of Dijon mustard. When my pasta was done I put it in my oven safe casserole dish and then I poured the sauce over it. I then layered shards of Parmesan Reggiano over the top and I put uncovered mac and cheese in my oven which I had preheated to 350 degrees. I let it cook for 30 minutes but when the timer got down to 2 minutes left I turned the broiler on in the oven so I could brown the top.

And that's what it looked like when it came out of the oven. Mmmmmmm, mmmmmmm, looks good doesn't it?
I served it with a spinach salad and a couple of low fat fried ham slices. Someone liked the mac and cheese very much so she had two servings of it but I'm not going to say who that person was. She liked it so much in fact that she wants me to make it for her office Christmas lunch, which of course I'll do.

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This recipe just goes to show you that because one is on a low fat diet that does not mean one has to give up all the comfort foods one used to eat way too much of. However one does need to keep in mind that one can't eat this very often, maybe once a month.

Eating with Dr. Monkey

When a seventy something year old woman asks you in a quivering voice a few weeks prior to the holiday, "What are ya'll doing for Thanksgiving?" What she's really saying is, "You better be coming to our house for Thanksgiving dinner because I'm cooking enough food to feed the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and all their extended families. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention that your father and I could drop dead any second because we're both past our mid 70's you know." And so that's how we found ourselves over at Sparky's parents house for Thanksgiving dinner.

We interrupt this post to bring you this important news:

Separated at birth:

Sparky's Mom Dave's Mom.

We now return you to your regularly secheduled blog post.

I don't know about Dave's Mom but Sparky's Mom sure can cook, even if she is spice averse. She also sets a nice table too.

My vegetarian friends may want to skip to the end of this post due to the nature of the following pictures.

Here was the guest of honor, all stuffed, cooked, and juicy. Alas poor turkey, we ate him well.

After a few bits of last minute prepping, football watching, and small talk, the meal was laid out and pronounced ready to eat.
We took our plates from the table and we served ourselves from the laid out spread. Please don't tell Lou Dobbs or Michael Malkin that we had guacamole and tortilla chips with our Thanksgiving dinner, they might call the INS or DHS on us if they knew we were enjoying foods from other ethnic groups on this uniquely North American holiday.

It was not a pretty sight for the next twenty to twenty five minutes as we stuffed our faces and enjoyed the meal. Let's just say all of us have "healthy" appetites. Especially me, look my plate:
My second serving looked a lot like the first but it was just a tiny bit smaller. Hey, I don't wear 3x polo shirts for nothing kids. As I ate and ate my pants began to feel tight around my waist and I felt flush with heat. To alleviate the symptoms of over eating I took off my shirt, unbuttoned my pants, lowered them to my ankles and I laid on the floor next to the table. I begged someone to take a photo of me in my post meal stupor so I could share it with all of you but no one would oblige me. Now you see what kind of selfish bastards I hang with on Thanksgiving!


After I was revived I went into the kitchen to see what kind of dent we put into all the food Sparky's Mom had cooked. The sight of what was left over astonished me: Even after 6 adults had hit that food as hard as we could, there was barely a dent in it. So we'll be making that 15 mile drive later this evening to eat that meal one more time. This time I swear I'll come back with a picture of my bloated Thanksgiving dinner stuffed nearly naked sweaty body for you my dear readers, or maybe not. One never knows.

10,000 Villages, 1 Presbyterian Church

It turns out huge cracks will not appear in the earth's crust and our home planet will not shift off it's axis and spin wildly into outer space if Sparky and I set foot in a church. Crazy huh? I found this out this morning around 11:30 when she and I drove to First Presbyterian Church Elizabethton. Elizabethton used to be the home of a deranged woman who was distantly related to me who I was taught to refer to as "Aunt Lillian" and she had a morbid fear two things: hippies and colored toilet paper, she thought both were a Communist plot to take over the USA. These days however Aunt Lillian is long dead and First Presbyterian is in the hands of local minister, peace and justice activist, monkey pal, and all around good guy Reverend John Shuck. The good Reverend's church had a sale today that Sparky and I didn't want to miss and that is how we found ourselves back inside a church today.

Outside of the lovely First Presbyterian Church in Elizabethton, TN.

Reverend John is one of the few good guys we know in religious circles and we have shopped at the 10,000 Villages store in Asheville, NC many times so it was a no brainer for us to ride over and drop in on the sale. Unfortunately for us the good Reverend was nowhere in sight and neither were monkey pals Bobby, Donna, and Susie, but somehow we managed to contain our sadness and we took in all the sale had to offer. We saw items like this cool cat purse and wooden snakes. Oddly enough no one wanted to handle the snakes so I picked one up and I began speaking in tongues. Well, not really, I didn't speak in tongues but I did pick one up and threaten to speak in tongues, but since Sparky told me I'd be walking back to Johnson City if I did, I decided not to.
We dug these toys made in Kenya but since we already have a wire dude on a wire bicycle that we bought from 10,000 Villages in Asheville years ago we didn't buy one of these. There were many hand carved items for sale, like these turtles. However all the items were not benign, it turns out that First Pres. may be on the wrong side of the war on Christmas! You want further proof? Check this out: Egads! How unseemly! A "Christian" church selling Christmas cards without the word "Christ" on them! Alert the baby Jesus, call FOX, get Bill O'Reilly down here STAT!

As we looked around at the rest of the items for sale I invented a new game. I call it "Basket or Hat?" The way we play is I show you a picture and you tell me if the object is a basket or a hat. Ready? Good! Here we go:


Basket or hat?


Basket or hat?


Basket or hat?

Ok, I admit that my game sucks, but trust me if Sparky had consented to my numerous pleas to put a basket on her head and wear it like a hat this game would have a lot more fun. Or if she had taken my picture wearing a basket as a hat then the fun would have never stopped!


We ended up buying some neat stuff, mostly Christmas decorations and ornaments, and we're glad we went. Maybe one day we might actually go to John's church on a Sunday and attend services, but don't hold your breath kids. It does my heart good to see that someone like John is the pastor at such a lovely church and I hope he continues his progressive ministry there for many years to come.

For the better part of the next four hours we wandered around in the many antique shops of downtown Elizabethton and in one of those shops I purchased this:
It's a Good Housekeeping magazine from 1955. I paid $1.37 for it. I'll be scanning in various articles and ads very soon and I'll share them with you here and on my other blog. I also saw this great item in one of those shops:
However I did not purchase them.

I did come across a store downtown that I know I'll be spending more time at very soon. It's a kitschy pop culture shop called "TV Memories." It sells all kinds of crazy old action figures, magazines, record albums, cereal boxes, and other bits of pop culture ephemera from the late 60's through today. It's my kind of shop but Sparky could barely stand to be in there for very long so I'll be going back soon to see the rest of their magical offerings. I'm not sure but I think I may want some of my ashes spread there after I get cremated.

All in all it was a nice trip to Elizabethton we had and we owe it all to John Shuck and his fantastic church.

Let's go grocery shopping!

The work crew who are building the corporate office building that is literally right across from the parking area of our condo broke a water line last night and so while I was waiting for some prescriptions to be filled I went to a local grocery store to get a gallon of drinking water. You know that one grocery store in your area where it's always 1979? Well, I went to my local 1979 grocery store this morning, I don't usually shop at this local chain, I shop at another instead. But I went there because it was close to the local pharmacy I patronize.

And of course I had my digital camera with me, so let's go shopping, downtown Johnson City, Tennessee style!

No worries you haters from across the country, just because the name of the store is "White's Fresh Food" they let anyone shop there now. Actually, the family that own the place is last name is White, hence the name.

The first thing you see when you walk in are the shelves o' value! Mmmm, lots of off brand and salvaged groceries can be found here in the shelves o' value. Most everywhere else yellow means caution or warning but at White's yellow means savings!

When you turn the corner you find yourself lost in a world of produce. Well, not so much a world of produce as it is maybe a tiny speck of produce. You want exotic stuff like red or yellow bell peppers? Jalapeno peppers? Tamarind? Fresh ginger? Garlic bulbs? Well forget about that shit because you're only getting the bare minimum here. And you're damn lucky to get that.

But then I saw something that caught my eye, something that drew me like a magnet, something that due to my years of bad eating habits made me powerless to resist it's siren song, what I saw was, if you'll look to the top of the picture above, a sign promoting SMOKED MEATS!


I ran towards the sign giddy with anticipation over what rich meaty delights might be in store (pun intended?) for me. Imagine my let down when I saw this:It was simply a wall of luncheon meats. Damn them for raising my hopes like that!

Off I went with hopes diminished. I spied aisles that were not quite overflowing but instead just flowing with stuff, food and non food items alike.

I looked up and I saw the at one time state of the art security system and I knew right then that I had better behave myself.

Then I looked up and saw quite a bit of water/giant mutant rat damage. I knew right then that my life might be in danger. So I decided to get my gallon of water and get the hell out of there.

I hurried past the seasonal merchandise aisle. I knew that soon, very soon, these shelves would groan under the weight of cheap Christmas crap that would be made in China.

I rushed past the shelves that contained off brand soda. I imagined that they would use this as the tag line in their commercials, "Hey, it's almost as good as the well known brands." The irony of course is that none of that shit is good, well known or off brand.

Then I walked hurriedly past white bread.
And more white bread.

Then I found the water and I bought my gallon and I hurried out. I was never so glad so be out of 1979 again. Whew! I'm thankful this time I made it out of 1979 without all that awkward teenage angst, zits, and strawberry double wide rolling papers. By the time I got to the pharmacy my geezer-esque prescriptions were ready and I drove home all the while cursing the speed demon teens who were flying by me doing every bit of 50 miles an hour on the interstate.