We arrived at the Englishtown flea market late on Saturday afternoon, so there was no time to waste. Over half of the sellers had already packed up, and of those who remained, many were clearly ready to throw in the towel.

I found jussst enough to consider the trip a success, and got reacquainted with the one positive thing about being late to a flea market: Those sellers will do anything to make a last minute sale. “Did I say five dollars? I MEANT I’LL PAY YOU. Not really but TURN AROUND, WE CAN WORK THIS OUT, MY NAME’S HANK WHAT’S YOURS?”

This week’s scores:

Vintage Hot Wheels Cars! ($5)

I try to steer clear of loose Hot Wheels, because they’re often dud investments, and the sellers usually want waaaay more than is reasonable. Luckily, one seller kept his prices in check, and he had some of my most beloved Hot Wheels cars of all time.

As a kid, whenever a Hot Wheels car didn’t actually look like a car, I was interested. I preferred the ones that doubled as robots, monsters or menacing animals. This lot includes several of my favorites, from that Autobot-esque motherfucker to the gnarly white rat-car, which once served as my rolling pet back before Mom & Dad let me have hamsters. Read More…

It’s Friday the 13th. Please clap.

To celebrate Jason’s big day, I’d like to introduce you to a… strange phenomenon. Some of you may have already noticed this, but most surely haven’t.

I’ll cut to the chase:

There are tons of YouTube videos starring people in Jason Voorhees costumes, DANCING.

The easy explanation is that there is no explanation, but there kinda is.

There’s a certain feeling of loony freedom that comes with wearing those masks. Your immediate impulse isn’t to act like Jason, exactly, but rather some mutant hybrid of a clown, a horse and a pop star’s backup dancer. The switch is immediate, and though not everyone succumbs to the urge, everybody wants to.

So, here are ten times when people dressed like Jason Voorhees danced on YouTube. May they make your Friday the 13th a little bit brighter:

“Jason Voorhees Dancing the Night Away”

You’ll feel pretty uncomfortable throughout this video’s 127 second duration, but you won’t be able to look away, either. Here, someone mixes a Jason mask with some kind of Abobo bodysuit, and provides what’s gotta be the first-ever male striptease set to an Alice Cooper song.

This is a Jason who’s unafraid to smack his own ass. I’m not sure if that qualifies as a warning or a promo. Read More…

Well, I resisted for as long as I could.

The new Ghostbusters toys have hit stores, and there’s literally not one of them that I don’t want. I’ll wait for the inevitable clearance sales for some, but it’s been a long time since one single toy line put out so much stuff that I HAD to buy.

I went to TRU only intending to buy Stay Puft, and left with a pile so tall that it looked like I was carting a freakin’ Dagwood. The cashier who rang me up said that she’d be buying the same toys after her shift, and being ill-prepared for camaraderie, I replied with my classic string of syllables that did not form any words, yet remained audible for as long as any sentence.

Here’s what I picked up: Read More…