New additions to the collection in 2022

A Trifle Further scours the globe to find new and exciting items to add to the vast collection of things that Sotheby’s will almost certainly offer to the public at absurdly high auction prices upon Mr. A Trifle Further’s timely demise. In an effort to help the future cataloger of these items, we present some of the highlights from the 2022 additions to the collection. And, to clarify, that’s additions secured in the year 2022 as opposed to more than 2000 items being added to the collection last year. We didn’t add quite that many.

Various soundtrack CDs from 1980s movies

One of the most exciting discoveries of 2022 was the website CDs You Want, which (almost certainly illegally) compiles soundtracks from movies that either never had soundtracks or had soundtracks that are now out of print. I don’t particularly care if it’s legal, because I finally have the soundtrack to Adventures in Babysitting (truly one of the great tragedies of modern times that an official soundtrack was never released) and a copy of the only Jimmy Buffett song I ever really care to hear, “Turning Around,” from Summer Rental. And I now have digital versions of soundtracks from Dragnet, National Lampoon’s Vacation, and Action Jackson, all of which I have on vinyl (though Action Jackson was purchased at Amoeba in Hollywood after I bought the CD, in another highlight of 2022). So now I can take songs like The Pointer Sisters’ “He Turned Me Out” and Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks’ “City of Crime” with me wherever I go. And I also have the Blue Oyster song from the Police Academy films at my fingertips. All of this is a joy I assume is similar to bringing a child into the world. But probably better.

Also, a quick shoutout to the overlooked theme to Twins, sung by Philip Bailey and Little Richard. And because the soundtracks have pretty much every version of a song you could want, I now have multiple versions of the Twins theme and “He Turned Me Out” to savor. This is not something I would have asked for, but I was given it nevertheless and I am a better human being for it.

Various magnets

I have inherited this collecting mania from my mother, who took to acquiring magnets from places she visited in her later years. So now I do the same, and they bring me joy when I look at my (very crowded) refrigerator and think about the places I have been lucky to visit. And seeing as this year was a particular strong travel year after a few years of trepidatious travel, I find great joy from my refrigerator. Or at least the outside of it. The inside needs a good clean, so it provides more shame than joy.

Anyway, this is a good magnet cross-section: an older place I’ve been to a lot (the Pancake Pantry in Nashville), a few places I’ve always wanted to visit (the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, which has King Friday XIII’s castle from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and the Louis Armstrong House in Queens, which is really great and features one of the slickest kitchens you’ll ever see), a newer version of a place I’d visited in a previous incarnation (the International Bowling Museum and Hall of Famein Arlington, TX), and a brand new place I was eager to visit, and it did not disappoint (the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa).

It was a good year for travel, and now the collection has visual magnetic proof.

The Lennon Sisters paper doll Set

Why would a 45=year-old man buy a 50-plus-year-old paper doll set of The Lennon Sisters?

You ask good questions.

In fact, this is probably the same question that ran through the head of the woman running a vintage store in Huntington, NY, when. after I spent more than an hour going through the two floors of her store, I came down the stairs with this paper doll set in prime condition. And that is why she looked at me as I put the set down on the counter and then said to me, “Well, I did not expect that.”

I enjoy surprising people.

Anyway, the closest I can come to a reason for the purchase is that The Lennon Sisters were a mainstay of The Lawrence Welk Show, which was a favorite of my Grandma Fairweather’s and which I will occasionally unashamedly watch, like this morning when I happened upon the 1970 New Year’s Day special and caught the tail end of a super-hot “Land of a Thousand Dances” routine.

So, yeah, I’ll buy Lawrence Welk souvenirs all day long.

Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs guitar pick

Speaking of Huntington, that’s where I saw Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs for the third time in 2022. I started off this Substack by telling you how much the first Dirty Knobs show meant to me, and sometimes I still feel the feeling I got from that show in Nashville. It was magical, and I wish everyone could feel that feeling every day of their lives. So I kept chasing more of that feeling at Dirty Knobs shows in Brooklyn and Huntington. They didn’t hit the highs of the Nashville show, but they still hit pretty high.

At the show in Huntington, the woman in front of me asked Mike for a pick, and he tossed one in her direction. but it didn’t quite reach her, falling in the gap between the stage and the barricade at the front of the audience. So, he tried a second time, telling her to cup her hands so she could better catch the pick. But she missed again, and the gentleman she was with, after asking one of the security people to get the pick for him and being denied, took it upon himself to climb over the barricade to get the pick. This did not sit well with the security guard and they got into a bit of an argument. And they were still in this argument when Mike came over with a handful of picks, so neither the gentleman nor the girlfriend were fully prepared when Mike just hurled that handful of picks in their direction, which was also my direction, which is how I got my very own Dirty Knobs pick from the floor.

It pairs nice with the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers pick someone from his crew gave me outside the Ed Sullivan Theater because Tom wouldn’t have time to stop to sign autographs. And it will forever serve as a reminder about how Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs made me feel better about the state of the world, and the state of my world in particular, in 2022.

Photos of Rab’s Bowling on the Green and Bobby Thomson and his dog in front of his Staten Island home

I have amassed quite the collection of old newspaper photos, courtesy of someone on eBay who seems to have obtained the photos in what I assume is some appropriate manner. Four of the photos hang in my bathroom, one is in my bedroom, and three are sitting in my desk drawer waiting for some wall space to open up in my apartment.

I already showed you one of the three photos I added to the collection this year, the photo of my local Blockbuster in part 2 of my salute to the glorious video stores of my youth. But these two are gems too. The first shows the exterior of Rab’s Bowling on the Green, another late, lamented Staten Island bowling alley where I participated in intramural bowling on many Fridays of my high school life. High school had its rough spots, and I wasn’t much of a joiner of things that might make the way a little less rough. But intramural bowling on Friday afternoons was something to look forward to every week, something that made the load a little lighter. I was on some pretty good teams, but I didn’t really even care if we won. I just liked the idea of having something at the end of the week that would bring me joy. And Rab’s was where that happened. It also had a good snack bar. So seeing a picture of the outside of it fills me with a feeling of comfort even now.

The second photo is of former New York Giant Bobby Thomson, the man who hit the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” in 1951 to give the Giants the pennant. As I mentioned in my post on Dusty Rhodes, Thomson took the Staten Island Ferry back to his home in Staten Island after hitting the home run, went to a tavern with his mom and brother, had a steak dinner, and then went back to his home. This is one of my all-time favorite baseball stories, and this picture was likely taken on the lawn of the very home in Staten Island he returned to that night. So, while I’d like to have a photo of Thomson on the ferry heading home that October night, this will serve as an acceptable substitute.

Razz Ma Tazz token and pizza plate

Farrell’s at the Staten Island Mall was obviously the Birthday Party Place of Choice as a kid, but variety is the spice of life, so one year I had my party at the Razz Ma Tazz Pizza Palace in Sayreville, NJ. It was just down the road from the Amboy Cinemas, the first multiplex I ever went to, where I saw E.T. and Ghostbusters, and it had pizza and arcade games and Whac-a-Mole, and, really, is there anything else important in the world when you’re a kid?

For years, I hoped to find a photo of Razz-Ma-Tazz or some sort of artifact I could have to remind me of a place that wasn’t in my life for long but I still think about on a pretty regular basis. There are dribs and drabs of information on Razz Ma Tazz on the web, but nothing I could really hold on to. In contrast, when I had similar thoughts about Farrell’s many years ago, I found dozens of things on eBay and even discovered there were a few operating in California (alas, they are all gone, but of course I visited three before they bit the dust, and even celebrated my 39th birthday—alone—at one of them; it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made).

Eventually, though, I did find a Razz Ma Tazz token on eBay. I missed out on my first chance but was offered a deal by another eBay seller, and soon I was the owner of a genuine Razz Ma Tazz token. And then, a few months later, a Razz Ma Tazz pizza plate popped up. I jumped on that, and now my Razz Ma Tazz Collection is likely complete. Unless I can find a good deal on a Whac-a-Mole.

Captain Kangaroo doll and signed Greg Evigan photo

Truth be told, these are only two of the many, many items I bought on my inaugural visit to the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention in Maryland. If I were to list all of the things I added to the collection at this convention, you might worry about me more than you already do. So I’ve chosen to just highlight two things that mean a lot to me.

I started every kindergarten morning by watching Captain Kangaroo. I thought he and Mr. Moose were the premier comedy duo in the world, and the “Things to Do” song was a real hot jam to kick off the day. I still think of that song pretty often, and the Captain was right there with Mr. Rogers and the Sesame Street and The Electric Company gangs in shaping me into the person I eventually became, which most days I think is a pretty OK person. So when I saw the Captain doll among other stuffed animals at a vendor’s table, I was intrigued. And when I was told it was only $5, I was the proud new owner of a Captain Kangaroo doll. He’s pretty rad.

When I wasn’t watching TV as a small child, I was playing with Matchbox cars, some of which I picked up new but a lot I got at yard sales. I’m pretty sure my B.J. and the Bear truck was in the latter group, because I always remember it being pretty beat up. I don’t know how you wouldn’t know this, but B.J. and the Bear was a TV show with an amazing theme song that followed the travails of a long-haul truck driver and his chimpanzee named Bear (named after Bear Bryant, of course). Yes, TV used to be so much better than it is today.

Anyway, the toy truck has survived all these years, so when I saw Greg Evigan—B.J. McKay himself, and also a Battle of the Network Stars alum—was appearing at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention, I knew I had to bring my truck along for a photo op. And I did, and also snagged this killer photo of B.J. and Bear, which Mr. Evigan also signed on Bear’s behalf, which was a nice touch. We also talked about Battle of the Network Stars a bit, and most of the time, that’s all I really want to talk about.

And so these are just some of the additions to the A Trifle Further Collection in 2022. There were many more. So many more. And there will be more in 2023. It is how we survive.

Happy New Year! Thanks for reading in 2022, and I hope you find good things here in 2023.