JASIMO’S BLOG

In my continuous mission of “content mining” — the act of rounding up whatever entertainment you can find using low cost alternatives such as secondhand shops or yard sales — my archive keeps building up faster than what my storage spaces will allow. But, here we are in a gilded age where consumers are being conned by tech companies that provide subscriptions while gaining little benefit from actually owning something you can control. That’s where this monthly digest of things you find in a thrift store comes handy — now that sounds like a Winner’s Circle answer on ‘The $25,000 Pyramid’, doesn’t it? This time, I’ll be covering a few finds pertaining to pop stars, an 80s comedy that’s been having a renewed following, some scary movies and more.

You can never go wrong about Canadian country music star Shania Twain, once a startup who would rise to (pop) superstardom before 1990s end. By the time the Robert Palmer-esque music video for ‘Man! I Feel Like A Woman’ flashed onto our CRTs, the country diva became an instant pop crossover. Right now, Kacey Musgraves holds the shelf title for the most CDs in the country category, including a Christmas album — I have six at last count. Shania hallmarked the power of women in 90s music and she nailed it. So why did somebody want to donate her 1999 live concert DVD? I rarely see live performances stocked in thrift stores, and all that high energy that Shania provides is too good to pass up.

Here’s the real thing… concerts and live performances on physical media including 4K and HD Blu-ray exist in small amounts today because of YouTube and all that uploaded K-pop and other SAS footage — that’s short for ‘short attention span’. I will have more to write about on this subject later. Being that this was nearly 30 years since Shania attracted a houseful of wildly packed fans, it speaks volumes.

While investigating for more DVDs and music at Goodwill, I found ‘Up’, her 2002 album and her first full-length in the five years since ‘Come On Over’. Adding a layer of icing to the cake is a greatest hits album I bought from Walmart at the exact moment I found the concert video the week before, with remarkable timing. I gotcha good, Shania — you’re still the one forever and for always!

Do you recognize this guy on the album cover? Well, if you grew up in the 80s just like I did, you can already tell that this is the face of Ray Parker, Jr.. As you well know, he was best remembered for the theme song to 1984’s biggest box-office hit GHOSTBUSTERS. Many years before then, he fronted the group Raydio, known for its lighter side of soul and R&B that translated into what sounds a lot like ‘yacht rock’ with a string of pop hits during its short run from 1977 to 1981. And while GHOSTBUSTERS was still playing in theaters, Parker Jr. contributed to performing the theme to PRYOR’S PLACE, a short-lived Krofft-made Saturday Morning kid show starring (who else?) Richard Pryor.

Of all the choices I can find at a thrift, this 1981 album ‘A Woman Needs Love’ on vinyl is as compelling as a choice can be against stacks of old-time religion and Engelbert Humperdinck. Raydio’s fourth, final and most successful album featured the title track as the number-four pop hit, plus the minor single ‘That Old Song’ (#21). One radio station in my area that does ‘yacht rock’ has been spinning ‘You Can’t Fight What You Feel’, also appearing on this album. The following year, Parker Jr. would turn solo with hits like ‘Jamie’ and ‘The Other Woman’, and of course the unexpected fame that would arrive in the form of a silly theme song to a popular movie.

I can thank my local Goodwill for selling this musical artifact. It’s the same store where I listened to the group’s 1979 hit ‘You Can’t Change That’ over an intercom playlist of feel-good throwback pop music that includes Britney Spears and countless other 2000s popmakers. It’s the kind of sound that sets off a vibrant mood for people who like to groove through the bric bracs. Or in my case, the DVD section.

Speaking of Britney Spears…

In August of 2000, McDonalds was selling a CD sampler and VHS tape of her and fellow boy group N-Sync (which by all accounts featured Justin Timberlake). To add excitement, on the back cover of this CD case revealed a notation where one lucky person could win, well, a contest by listening in to the CD. The winning prize? A meeting with either Britney or the members of N-Sync including Justin! Of the eight tracks with four songs apiece, it featured a remixed version of ‘Oops, I Did It Again’.

There’s no way I can time-travel back twenty-six years to figure out what all the hype was about, but locating this one buried beneath all those sentimental instrumental Christmas CDs meant that another artifact of music history was waiting to be rediscovered by unsuspecting hands. Needless to say, teen pop’s most exciting most innocent era came to a screeching halt as Britney and Justin went on separate ways, but they continued to move forward in their career paths despite becoming tabloid fodder in years to come. For those who grew up with them, however, finding this one might give us grown adults a chance to relive our youthful ways.

I hear a lot of folks these days are reminiscing about the somewhat under-appreciated 1986 comedy film THREE AMIGOS, which performed modestly at the box office but later becoming a cult movie curiosity like many of other John Landis’ quirky comedies including a werewolf flick. For this was the year Steve Martin was singing in his movies — this one and LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. He and his fellow co-stars Martin Short and Chevy Chase play the washed-out trio of silent movie stars who find themselves double-crossed by a band of banditos in a Mexican village hoping to retrieve a big fortune. It’s quite a riot, actually.

Whimsical movies like this didn’t come around often in the 80s and they sure don’t come around often now. While I’m lucky that I found a copy of this film on DVD, it’s a standard bare-bones DVD that won’t cut it in this current generation of physical media where boutique labels are making movies more collectible than ever before. This will be one of them, so I’m still waiting for a comprehensive 4K version with original cover art just as I’m holding on to a note for fifteen seconds like those bumbling three ahhhhhhhhh-migos ever could.

Now what is this? A movie starring Miley Cyrus? LOL! By now, Miley’s newest album should be out and we get to step back a good fifteen or so years when her aspirations of becoming a real bona fide movie actress fell flat.

I suppose the critics were going LOL over this one, too. Made to capitalize on Miley’s fame after her monumental run as ‘Hannah Montana’, this one also capitalizes on Facebook culture. She’s enjoyed better years ahead as a tried-and-true pop star from the very beginning, and for good reason.

But I like Demi Lovato — err, um, excuse me, Demi MOORE so much that she made me want more. This movie belongs to her. And I have a VHS copy of G.I. JANE I’d gladly like to give you…

Or even better… oh, sorry, I’m hanging on to it…

Right now, the ratio of DVDs versus Blu-rays sold in thrift stores based on my observations is pretty much 50 to 1, but that can go higher or lower. I don’t live in a highly populated city where there can be more to choose from, so results are varied. Nevertheless, I have picked up a fairly decent number of Blu-ray movies from thrift stores I have access to. It’s the middle ground between standard-def DVD and 4K, and it can still provide you with a stellar picture. I would think in a few more years, we’ll start seeing more Blus being donated and receiving the second life from new owners. Grab those Blus while you can!

It’s a real shocker that I found CONTAGION sandwiched between every other used and abused DVD case sitting on the shelf and waiting for the next hand. This was a movie about a viral pandemic that echoed perfectly with the events of the early 2020s. It’s also the perfect kind of movie that when it’s gone it’s gone.

Wrapping up this month’s edition of Thrift Store Digest, I have here a horror flick that was deliberately found at a Goodwill store somewhere within a twenty mile radius from my house. And mind you, it is absolutely rare to find any true horror-related movie content aside from ‘Goosebumps’. That movie was CABIN FEVER from 2002, and Cerina Vincent is as real as scream queens get— she’s now writing children’s books, btw.

I get the picture now. Horror flicks are big business. They attract wide audiences and hardcore fanbases, so it’s likely they’re the ones to pay top dollar for anything. Even for a scuffy looking VHS copy of the 80s cult masterpiece CHOPPING MALL — the original VHS copies of the film are going as high as four-figures on EBay now. Try your luck at finding this one at your charity thrift, and you might find yourself making a fat profit through reselling. Extraordinarily difficult, but not impossible.

As for CABIN FEVER, it’s not going to be worth too much because there’s nothing elaborate here for a DVD with a fairly generic presentation like this one, either. I could easily find this at yard sales because there really isn’t much at face value compared to Lionsgate’s other offerings… THE CABIN IN THE WOODS being that truly bizarre horror-slasher film with a major cult following. Or, YOU’RE NEXT which is loaded with diabolically gruesome scenes. Or, the SAW series with legions of fans around the globe supporting all those bloody sequels. Maybe it’s time for me to expand Thrift Store Digest and include these and other rare finds from Ebay if horror flicks are going to be covered on a constant basis. I’m sure I am going to break my bank, but paying for my health care comes first.

In closing, I would ask for you to please remember to support physical media and visit my TikTok for more content. In fact, I have enjoyed far better success on TikTok than all of my other socials combined based on the high numbers of likes and view counts from uploaded reels including the one about 2000s movies which sat an all-time engagement record. Even better, I create ‘Melody’ cartoons as part of my content creation efforts — go here and here. That’s what I consider special achievement for doing a one-man project. Your support is greatly appreciated!