Shaun Lewis: the Man, the Myth, the Legend

It’s Saturday afternoon.

Jason the Mexican and I just got back from thrift store shopping and I must say that we had a fantastic time. At least, I did. I don’t know if Jason did. He wasn’t weeping, crying, shouting, or anything like that when we were finished, so I think it’s safe to assume he did too. Jason DOES have a tendency to cry whenever we go out. Mostly, it’s either caused by “horrible, horrible music” or because we went to some “stupid store.” I think for the record I would like to say, “Go to hell, Jason.”

You can’t please everyone and I certainly don’t try, I guess.

A few interesting things happened on our little trip. Originally, we went to buy Laura her birthday present because both of us are really cheap friends. Actually, Laura and I have an ongoing tradition of getting each other the weirdest things we could find at thrift stores. I believe for my birthday, I got a few books (one of which was about foxes) and a gallon of vintage 1992 cologne in a ceramic Abraham Lincoln bust. The stench was quite formidable. It stinged [yeah… that should be “stung”… I’m an idiot sometimes] the nostrils. OK, I’m going to be honest with you: it smelled like pure gasoline. Yeah, but 70% of the time, it worked every time.

And that was my Anchorman tangent for the day. I’m sure there will be more.

But, yeah. I found the MOST AWESOME PRESENT IN THE ENTIRE WORLD FOR LAURA!!! I’m actually extremely excited about it right now, but I can’t say what it was because Laura reads this journal. Gasp! I suppose everyone will have to wait to find out what it was. Surely, it will be hard to top the old can of paint varnish I got for her one year, but I think I can do it.

In addition to Laura’s present, I also bought 1000 shirts. I was in desperate need of new shirts. The ones I have been wearing have seen a lot of action lately because I lost most of my collection. I honestly have no idea where they went. I think there are like 3 or 4 I’ve been wearing every week (that means I had to do laundry a lot, which sucks). There was one shirt in particular that I liked. It was a white shirt and it said, “Can the Ban” on the front; on the back was, “Smoking Ban Kills Rights.” I don’t really agree with the shirt, so I’m going to cross off “Ban” and “Rights” from the back with a black permanent marker so it says, “Smoking Kills”. This makes me excited because then I will have a true hippy shirt. I’ve always wanted one of those. My “Stop Bombing Serbia—Peace Through Civility” shirt can be qualified as one, I suppose, but it’s a little dated. I’m excited to have a shirt with a message pertinent to the debates of today.

That was on the Shirt Front though.

There were a BUNCH of other items I got. Actually, no. I just got the things above and some records. I hadn’t bought any records in about a year and ever since Jacki started listening to records a month or two ago, I’ve been in the mood for them again. I used to be hardcore record. In fact, that’s all a lot of my friends got me for my birthday—records they found in the thrift store. There were a number of good ones. Today, I got an old 78 rpm of four songs from Bizet’s Carmen and the soundtrack to My Fair Lady. I’m listening to the latter right now. It’s in extremely good condition except for two spots, but one of those spots is during “I Could Have Danced All Night.” That is my favorite song from that musical. It’s not too much of a problem though. It just skips for a BRIEF second close to the end.

So, that’s really it. Except Jason broke a coffee mug in the Valley Thrift Store. He picked it up and it fell to the ground and quite literally shattered by the cash registers. Jason was a good sport about it though; he even offered to pay for it, but the cashier just threw it away. I probably would have just hid it or said it was like that when I got it.

That’s why I’m a heathen, I guess.