Mug Shot Series No. 7FG388

Basura. The Movie!

Musica de Sakamoto. Magnifico! ¿Pero dónde es el Ladrón de Basura?

More Amazing Free Stuff in the Mission

Yes We Can $19.95

Sometimes I wonder if the President could sue jerks for mis-use of his image. There was an odd side of me that came close to buying a $12 Obama plate at Walgreens the other evening before reason returned. This, however, is really disturbing yet also encouraging that some of the Franklin Mint crowd want these. Though, I wonder, if Ben's descendents have ever considered suing these jerks for co-opting of his name

We've Got Competition

Walking down 24th Street this morning, I saw a truck for these guys with their Folsom Street Fair-ready logo man on the side of the truck. Yep, there is a Junk General in the 'hood. Though the proprietor of this junk entity is more of a pacifist, I must admit that I am drawn to their 1-888-Junk-Sir service number.

There is also our near-cousin Junk Pirate, but like this site it's junk saving not junk-ridding spot.

Daddy Don't Walk So Fast

It's a week of tributes and mentions for Junk Thief. Perhaps he's falling into the role of junk elder and can expect to be inducted into the Junk Hall of Fame soon. Or at least he should be awarded a star on Turk Street.

Tugboat Dave has posted a cool little video that he said was inspired in part by Junk Thief and his motto of "It doesn't have to make sense. It just has to take up space." Junk Thief doesn't recall having said that, but it's not bad. How many beers into the evening was that quote made, Dave?

In the meantime, just call Junk Thief Papito de Basura from here on out.

Interactive Friday: The Many Faces of Junk Thief

Okay, here goes. We start with this, and then...

Baby Junk Thief

Apeman Junk Thief

East Asian Junk Thief

Manga Cartoon Junk Thief

"Feminized" Junk Thief
Afro-Caribbean Junk Thief

Botticelli Junk Thief

Modigliani Junk Thief

If you decide to take the challenge, visit Face Transformer and post a link to yours in comments. Have fun. Thanks to Toddspot for this discovery.

Book/Oprah Episode Idea

Tips on how to recycle or organize all these rarely read tomes on getting ones life in order.

Mapping Junkyville

I can never get enough of cool and weird maps, and I could entertain myself for hours on end touring the various quadrants of the Simpsons' Springfield. So finding this searchable map was a nice treat on such a dreary, wet afternoon. Chez Guevera and Paté LaBelle are especially appealing to me, and I'm glad to see I could find a place called Junkyville.

What Were You People THINK-ING!?!?!?

Dr. Phil is out of control and his friends just want him to STOP.

Okay, I have never been a fan of Dr. Phil McGraw, native of Vinita, Oklahoma (ironically, or appropriately, home of the Sooner State's enormous state mental hospital), but lately he is verging on annoying me as much as Madonna, Michael Moore and George W. Bush, three people whom I consider to be the three stations of the American Apocalypse. McGraw has come to embody the same level of hypocrisy and greed that those three do. So, perhaps it's advanced from a toxic trilogy to a quacking quartet.

Why do I hate those three (and now four) so much? Because they are obsessed by three things -- money, fame and a "legacy" and (on top of it all) are hollow to the core. The fact that each have different politics is of no consequence. All four are made of the same things -- bullshit and cardboard.

A good seven to nine years ago, Dr. Phil was relatively benign, no more than an Oprah also ran who espoused solid but bland advice. He shared trite Powerpoints about setting life goals. That initially served as the template for his show as he fled from the Oprah mother ship to launch his own empire, shrouded in the veneer of "helping people" but clearly driven by greed and fame. There were plenty of frustrated mid-career professionals who needed "get excited about life" and substance abusers looking for appropriate 12-step programs. Solid, traditional and boring. So, soon Dr. Phil learned that the biggest coins are wallowing at the bottom of the cesspool, and you have to choke on a few turds in order to go for the gold. Madonna certainly understands that, and she has emerged from the feces pond to emerge as a self appointed lady of the manor who has cash to burn and buy babies in Africa.

So Dr. Phil has come to air shows with increasingly sleazy themes. "Only you can own your life, Imogene, but I gotta tell you that if you're pregnant with your grandson's baby, you're just askin' for trouble."

Then there was the debacle of Dr. Phil's weight loss challenge. Oh, doctor heal thyself! He even introduced his branded of "Dr. Phil Bars". What were they made of? Bacon grease and elephant lard? Like this man is authorized to give me tips on weight loss? My favorite line during this stage of his career was: "Steve, you gotta get real about bein' fat or get real fat!" Apparently being real is a key to surviving while under the watchful eye of Dr. Phil.

I have to admit I've been pretty oblivious to Dr. Phil until his recent dive to below the deepest depths of the toilet bowl of fucked up Americana during his emergency intervention at the behest of the family of Britney Spears, a process he promised to expose in all its tabloid trashiness for record ratings until even his most loyal fans agreed that this tubby Texan had finally gnarled on one too many dysfunctional trailer trash famiies.

Mercifully, I think Dr. Phil is on the verge of nearing the end of his syndication contracts. While flying from the fattest city in the U.S. (where you can buy 320 count boxes of Dr. Phil bars at Sam's Club), I did transit through Houston (which is really pissed that it has lost the #1 spot in the tubbo metropolis competition). Though I usually cringe when I hear that we are landing in George Bush Airport (Gee, why not name it Placa de Pinochet or Hitler's Hide-Away?), I was sort of pleased to learn that Dr. Phil is making a smooth transition from broadcasting franchising to food franchising. Not with Dr. Phil's bars but the artery clogging food he so loves. Wedged right in between Bubba Gump's and Starbucks in George Bush Airport I discovered the new collaboration between Dr. Phil and the often maligned Cracker Barrell - FAT CRACKERS. He has wisely chosen the lead of other washed up entertainers (Arthur Treacher's Fish 'n' Chips, Kenny Rogers Roasters, Jimmy Dean Sausage) and learned the importance and residuals of unhealthy food branding. There at the entry was a huge portrait of Dr. Phil gnawing on a barbecued rib as he dispensed advice on setting one's life goals. Just as I started to nab a photo, a member of the TSA shook an angry index finger of me and I had to put away the camera.

So I went onto Dr. Phil's website and was intrigued to learn that there was quite a number of names Dr. Phil went through before settling on FAT CRACKERS. Here is a sampling:

• Phil 'Er Up
• Gravy a Go Go
• Fry Me Up, Fry Me Down!
• Beyond the Gravy
• Gotta Fry Before I Get Too Old
• What Would Elvis Eat?
• Gravy Acres
• Lord of the Onion Rings
• Garçon, There’s a Pig in My Gravy!
• Phat Phil's Phry Depot
• The Good, The Bad and the Gravy
• Yes, We Pecan!
• Dr. Phil's Gravy Pops (Too close to Gravy on a Stick for my attorney's comfort)
• Fry Ask Fry?
• Ain't Nuthin' But a Butterhorndawg
• Fry, Mommy, Fry!

Pet Rocks, Freakies, Sambos and More

I'd like to recommend a new addition to the blog roll and a nice launch for 2008 that looks back on the oddities of the recent past, especially the 1970s and 1980s. "Gavin Elster" in Southern California (the Brocklebank has never been as classy since he left) has retired his Sequioa Sempervirens site with the close of 2007 and launched They All Come Back.

Did you eat Freakies cereal as a kid? Did you house train a Pet Rock? Did you go for blintzes at Sambo's? Then don't just sit there, head over to They All Come Back right now.

I don't know if he'd agree, but I think Gavin is something of a Junk Thief himself.

The Story of Junk, Er, I Mean, Stuff

Although in theory I agree with the rants of Reverend Billy, I ultimately find him to be a bit to, well, preachy.

However, I'm thrilled to see that Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff is now reaching a wider audience. I've heard her speak a few times and find her to be straight forward, not condescending and able to present these facts in a clear straightforward manner. It's as if she's a human version of the Pinky Show!

In a way she's sort of the shadow side of what lies beneath Junk Thief, that there's too much stuff/junk filling our lives that are the symptoms of a system in crises.

So Much Junk, So Few Gigabytes

Make no mistake about it. We live in the most junk obsessed society on the face of the planet.

Take the "news" and blogger buzz last week. I mean, what incident of significance happened? Correct, it was all about an overweight, drunk 25-year-old stumbling around on a stage in Las Vegas? Search on YouTube, and you'll find 2,160 clips referencing the Britney Spears VMA fiasco. Just so you know that United States Americans (to borrow a phrase from Miss South Carolina) have their priorities straight, you'll find only 76 references to General Petraeus' report to Congress. (Huh, what's that about? Who's Petraeus? What's a Congress?) Amazingly, you'll actually find a total of five references to the bombings in Kathmandu, needless to say none of them in English. (Hey, those folks don't matter, they only make clothes to sell at H&M, they can't actually shop there.)

Nobody cares that people are getting killed by bombs in Nepal and Iraq, right? We want to see Britney bomb.

What's really spooky about this is that there will actually be plenty of people buying the crap she has to sell. We all need another chance to listen to that great message she has to share in her lyric that goes something like "Gimme, gimme, gimme more." However, I'm not clear what she is pleading for in excess -- more dollars for her CDs or just more plain old Chicken McNuggets. All that matters is gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme...

All of this got me to thinking about all the junk that's out there and the very name and intent of this site. I mean, for cryin' out load, there is just so much useless product that we toil away our waking hours in order to waste dollars on and ascribe meaning to. But why are we buying it when there are so many treasures waiting for us to nab for free?

Why do so many of us feel that it's really important that we've bought something with a Kenneth Cole label even though he never saw the garment that was dreamed up by some junior assistant who spent 10 minutes designing and some woman in Nepal wove together and got 50 cents for her 10 hours of labor.

That was one of the reasons I decided to start a blog in the first place, to reclaim the junk that gets ignored or thrown in the trash heap. There is a lot of junk out there and a lot of stories behind each piece. So over the past few days, I've been encouraged to come across others who feel the same.

Eva Deadbeat, has a great new vlog about Found magazine. I came across the 'zine in a bookstore over the weekend, and it was heartening to see another like-minded group roaming the U.S. in their van to collect and ascribe meeting to junk they find. The whole concept of being a Junk Thief is not original, and more than a year ago when I predicted the coming Junk Thief revolution, I knew that I was neither the originator nor alone in my quest to promote finding and ascribing meaning to all the trashy treasures out there. The question is, will all the junk thieves ever manage to connect? I'm curious if the creators of the play Lost and Found in the Mission that made an entire musical production centered around trash lingering in the streets of our fair city and staged at the now sadly departed Jon Sims Center and Junk Pirate magazine know about each other as well as Junk Thief and Found magazine. The best thing about Found magazine is that it has nothing mined form Google searches, just plain old-fashioned, physical gleaning. I think we all should make a convoy of funky old vans and tour the country. And as hungry junk thieves, we'll probably look a lot more appealing as we dance in our skivvies belting out "Gimme, gimme, gimme more (junk)."

It Doesn't Mean I'm Gay, You Know

After all the pressure getting ready for the Memorial Day estate sale at Lazy Acres, I really enjoyed doing my mini-stoop sale with J today and managing to come up with enough cash to buy some DVDs at Amoeba and a jumbo burrito. Not bad for three and a half hours work and plenty of great street theater.

That hideous thing at the top that looks like something that was inspired by a 1986 Bill Cosby sweater was sort of the pièce de résistance (as in anyone with an ounce of class would resist it) of the sale. It was actually a birthday gift to J from an ex who insisted that they were being sold for $180 at a shop in Ghiradelli Square and that Bette Midler has one in her home. (Yeah, maybe as a memento from Ruthless People.) Sometimes called the menorah from Hell, it's been a running gag for a couple of years, something to drag out at parties to see people's mouths drop in horror. We just wondered if there'd be someone who'd actually have such bad taste that they'd buy it.

It managed to be a good source of humor with our customers, but finally there was a woman late in the day. We didn't catch her name, but we'll call her "Phoebe" -- 4osh, mildly hippie-chick who said she'd been spending the day buying shoes along 24th Street in Noe Valley. She has a thing for butterflies, and J gave her a small packet he had of them as an enticement. Phoebe was really drawn to the menorah from Hell and then went on a rant about how horrible it is that some people will come to a shop, try to bargain someone for a great piece of art and insult the artist and gallery owner. After agreeing to pay $3, she left paying $2. We tried to get her to buy a pair of beaded curtains. Phoebe said she already has some in her Potrero Hill home that are purple with sparkling turquoise accents. Oh, I can just see her and her Wednesday night nude women's yoga group with the menorah ablaze as they strike their sun pose to the sounds of Zap Mama.

One of the best parts of the deal, was that I got cash for crap left over from a number of exes, some of it going back 15 to 17 years. I unloaded the emotional baggage years ago, and it's liberating that none of their literal cargo is still festering in my closets or offsite storage. If I ever needed a sign that it's time to get back on the boyfriend hunt, this was it. Always smart and sassy, Junk Thief is now available for your dating pleasure. Bring it on!

Precious, J's tripod, was a great traffic builder in his 1950s house dress.

Best come back line I wish I'd said but waited to long: A couple really funny, Jewish-looking boho/bobo dudes in a mid-1980s Volvo station wagon bought a zebra striped vase. I razzed them about being so grand as to call it a vaz. Their parting shot (said with love, of course) "Now just because we're a couple of dudes buying a fancy vaz with pussy willow in it, I don't wantcha to go around saying I'm gay." My comeback, of course, should have been, "Whatever you say, Senator Craig."Woo hoo! I can upgrade from the $2 to $4 bottle of gin and treat a couple of the homeless people to their own bottle tonight. Now, this is what I call a holiday!

Celebrity Junk Drawers and Fish Rodeo

JunkThief knew he just couldn't let the show Celebrity Junk Drawer at 111 Minna Gallery come and go without dropping in and paying homage and was glad to know that ever dapper and witty Bryce Digdug was interested in going. (Halfway there, JunkThief realized that he'd forgotten to write down the address but managed to find it by dumb luck.) Upon arriving for the gallery's "art happy hour" imagine the horror as the doorman checked the IDs of the mainly 20-something crowd but waved Bryce and JunkThief in despondently and told them to put away their wallets! Though the velvet rope outside was a bit much, those horse heads made them feel as if this were "21." Or "Twin-tea-one" as the true inner circle call it. (JunkThief still lunches there when in Manhattan and feels the need to dish dirt with old chum Lee Radziwell who loves to recount stories of her 1967 TV appearance in the title role of Laura.)

Since it was a free show and Bryce and JunkThief didn't imbibe except for the sights, they really couldn't afford to complain about the music volume level and young 'ins blocking the view, oblivious to the fact that this was a, uh, you know, gallery and not just another bar. While disappointing that there were only 7-8 of Mecier's works on display, the ones there were great fun. Kathy Griffin against a backdrop of Clay Aiken was a particular treat. Mecier also does great things with keys as a medium. However, there are even more over here on Mecier's site. It was too bad that the show doesn't include Charo, Carol Channing or Morgan Fairchild.

Regardless, Mecier's work is really clever and often stunning and made from real junk -- matchbooks, curlers, pencils, food package, gum wrappers, you name it. And he doesn't seem to ever resort to painting the junk but grouping the found objects to create ranges of one shade.

Having Bryce captive for a while, JunkThief had to ask about that dapper gentleman in his Frappr photo on the right. Well, it's not really Bryce, we're sorry to reveal (though Bryce has been known to hang out with the yacht club crowd) but someone at the Louisiana "fish rodeo". Most of us have never heard of such an animal, but apparently that's where embattled Louisiana Senator David Vitter met one of his madams. Only in Louisiana, apparently.

Speaking of Frappr photos, Bryce pointed out the curious shot of the young man from Morocco offering his phone number on the right. JunkThief doesn't know a way to get rid of a photo once it's on there. The bigger question is, do you think that's his thumb or (as Bryce thinks) is he showing...oh, we don't want to go there.


UPDATE: Call it irony, call it kismet that this entry was posted hours before the announcement of Tammy Fae (yes, the second image with the dog) leaving the living. In case it's been a while since you hear it, here is a portion of her classic "The Ballad of Jim and Tammy Fae"

Grapes of Wrath - 2007 Version

JunkThief has packed up the U-Haul with items from Lazy Acres for the route west. The vehicle is filled at about 8% capacity since his requestion cargo van was not available, and this was the smallest vehicle available in the state. Either hell or an adventure begins tomrrow.

JunkThief Always Wanted to Be a Shriner

What house is complete without a tea shrine? And what did poor JunkThief do back when he lived in a city without a Japantown, let alone Ichiban Kan that was selling tansu cabinets for less than he usually pays for a pair of shoes?

Most of these pots came from the Hong Kong teapot museum shop and are not even the tip of the iceberg. And as far as varities of teas? He has more varieties of Oolong than most have of pairs of socks. Okay, Warhol had his cookie jars, JunkThief has his teapots..as well as LPs, 78s, shoes, silent movies, Oaxacan pottery, ex beaus...Thank God for offsite. Off to Sugarlump for coffee in the meantime. Tea after dinner sounds good.

UPDATE: Not completely unrelated question: How many times in one day is KCRW going to play clips from the Joni Mitchell tribute album? Especially Bjork's take on "The Boho Dance"? JunkThief does love almost all things Joni, but this is starting to get on his nerves to the point to where he might actually have to resort to doing something radical -- like listen to local San Francisco commercial radio stations. Uh, no, that's not going to happen. How did this city that was once considered cutting edge on the pop music scene end up having generally stellar NPR affiliates but popular music channels that would be considered lame in Moline, Illinois. Aw well, Thank God for the internet and iTunes radio for that matter too.

Cabinets of Curiosities

Is this JunkThief at 90? Oh, he hopes not. If he's around then (and based on his gene pool, there's a good chance), he hopes that he's done many estate sales and pared down to a tiny zen flat somewhere in Tokyo. This photo of Gray Foy is from a recent New York magazine article about the release of the book The Grand Surprise, the journals of Foy's longtime partner Leo Lerman. Lerman was, among other things, an omnivore of high and low culture, and general dishy gossip.

How fitting it is that one can spot upon close inspection of the photo, the book Cabinets of Curiosities in the far left corner since it appears that Lerman lived his life that way of overstuffing rooms and the decades of his life with curious objects and people high and low. This got JunkThief thinking after reading this entry over on Kusala's blog musing on the value of buying and never getting around to reading books on obscure topics such as Weimar exiles in L.A. or just getting what you need from the book review instead of investing time and money into a hard cover edition.

What, the point was raised, is the use of gathering more and more information that might be weaved into a conversation at a cocktail party, proving that you can speak with even modest authority about Weimar Berlin, as if it mattered that you knew what Anita Berber was wearing when she died. Are we filling our cabinets of curiosities with meaningful, transformative experience or petty cocktail party fodder? Will JunkThief's life have meant more if he finally manages to read all of the untranslated Proust and Cavafy (likely on the former; ain't gonna happen on the latter) or to make that work-related trip to Niger? Are they signposts, the answer to the riddle of the troll that allows passage across the bridge to the next vista, or just a bunch of more useless crap collected?

"So much useless beauty..." Elvis Costello mused a decade or so ago. And that sentiment as raised by Lerman when he once told Paul Bowles that his stories were like Chinese boxes, each opening into another—and that at the end there was nothing. Is that so bad?

Blogger friend Salty Miss Jill recently mentioned picking up the Andy Warhol Diaries for a buck or so, and JunkThief recalls spending $40 or so when it came out thinking that by devouring it there and then he would gain something that would be stale if he waited for it in paperback or the cutout bin. Snippets of it come back to him now and then, such as his hilarious comments about going to see Cats, but what difference would it have made if JunkThief waited a couple of decades to buy it for $.99 and how would JunkThief have wasted the $39 saved? All the same, JunkThief has devoured almost all of the Ned Rorem journals and those of Glenway Wescott, as if these entries gave me some keyhole view of the random moments of lives. JunkThief has kept journals since age 12, and they have been useful sign posts to revisit, but is there anything after opening that final Chinese box?

I remember the director Ozu glowing about his eternal journey into the great nothingness, the ultimately fulfillment that a life well led left behind no evidence. That, of course, is not what happened with Ozu whose films are over analyzed for the meaning in their simplicity and static camera shots. Or what about Henry Darger whose seemingly nothing life as a janitor muttering and painting away in a pathetic, tiny room ended in poverty and left behind works that sell for six to seven figures and are in $500 hard back editions.

In the meantime, the Lerman book is on its way in the mail.


UPDATE: My copy arrived this morning (Thursday, May 24) , and I sneaked a few snippets over lunch. Dern, that Lerman is one catty queen (who has a guest room with nothing but paintings of dogs). Wonderfully dishy gossip over the course of nearly 50 years.

Another Chapter Closes

Why surely you didn't think JunkThief could make a swing through the Heartland without a visit to the mothership of all things junk, Lazy Acres, did you? While this will not be my last trip here, it's one that marks the close of one major chapter. My sister and I did a final walk through before the estate sale team descends tomorrow morning. Beginning with the close of the holiday season, we began sifting through those things to keep, those to store and those to sell. It all climaxed in the Great Junk Sort featured on the epic two part JunkThief TV episode #19.

Closing this chapter is a bittersweet. It will be nice not having to worry about ALL that stuff but also a chore to sort through the things I have claimed and will be taking to California. And after always seeing my mother's house as the model of well ordered perfection with everything alphabetized and color coded, the sorting has turned it into our own Grey Gardens minus the racoons but with a few impromptu fashion shows.

Seeing her purple irises in bloom brought back many positive memories of this time of year and convinced me to transplant some more. For whatever reason, past ones that I've lugged across the Mojave have lived but not blossomed.

Finding a bag of the 2003 crop already has me misty eyed about saying farewell to the 25 pecan trees on the property. It's not the same buying a bag at Trader Joe's that I used to be able to have fresh from the trees my grandfather planted in 1957.

While sorting through some of the last few jewels, I came across some stray accouterments from Halloweens past and snapped these shots. Perhaps this should be the new signature photo for JunkThief. Whaddya think?

Detroit, the American Mount Olympus

Detroit, that town of dead end dreams, has always fascinated me. So I was happy to end a short work trip with a visit to my cousin Ginger whom I see maybe once every three years. She lives in the same house where she grew up and has only modestly remodeled since her parents died a few years ago. That isn't a bad thing since the house is solid mid-century design, and fortunately never suffered through a "French country" phase. It has the same sunken living room with recessed lighting where we used to perform our favorite songs from Once Upon a Mattress at family gatherings when we were both four years old. Since she is six months my senior, she got to play Queen Aggravain to my Princess Fred. (Ginger also loved to play Gilligan's Island and would prance in haughtily as I sang "...and a movie star!")

Sometimes we would let her best friend -- we’ll call her Alice – play Lady Larken because she was so small and perky. Last night Ginger invited Alice over for dinner. Let's just say that there is not a lot of small and perky left in Alice.

The great thing about visiting a place like Detroit is that people like Alice will grab your hand and wistfully say, “San Fran-cis-co…” as if I were from Iberia or Lourdes. Oh, I’m sure those places get boring too. I recall Detroit being held up as the city of progress and industry as a child, so it's intriguing to come back and see what it is today -- its northside suburbs making you feel you're in Palo Alto, but the inner city a true rotting inner city, or a huge East Palo Alto. I can't wait to see Vegas crash and burn so I can go see it rotting away in the desert.

People here think that my fascination with Detroit is bizarre, but I consider it to be the American Acropolis, a mostly intact ruin that is still a relatively functioning city. Maybe that’s why I am a true Junk Thief, always more fascinated by the soiled jewel cowering in front of the glistening, flawless new ones. Of course, I probably spend more of my money on the new ones, hoping they will soon take on the patina and “integrity” of the junks bobbing in the waters beneath the shimmering towers.

Detroit, if approached from the water, as opposed from the south by car, can look stunning and prosperous. Legends like Marlene Dietrich took a similar approach by asking people to keep an appropriate distance in her later years. As I keep adding years to my vitae, I may start asking that people approach me slowly by sea in a canoe or Hong Kongese junk in order to behold the glistening tower from afar.