I started seeing signs all over Ballard on Friday night for a tool sale, but in the morning Jenny pointed out that one of them also said Michael Jackson’s glove.

It might be a little too soon for that, and the sale itself was just a crappy junk sale with stuff that could be pulled out of any basement. Jenny was wandering around the sale saying “I don’t see any gloves here.”

We ended up hitting some major duds. The woman moving out of the country that was so annoying that none of us wanted to give her money. “Ballard’s Best Yard Sale” which had toothpaste and a used toothbrush for sale — how gross is that? I mean by the time that you used it, isn’t it something that just needs to go in the trash? Plus, some other POS sales — I swear to god. GO TO THE SALVATION ARMY.

We hit a block sale that looked like it could be good. I had just finished a scone and still had my bag and napkin in my hand. I started looking over a rack of clothing and for one pair of jeans she wanted $30! I stuck the baked good garbage in the pocket and walked away. Honestly, I talk a good game, but I rarely do anything about it.

Karl started belly-aching that all the sales sucked, asking if it was payback for him taking me to crappy sales a few weeks ago. Then we hit a very oddball lefty sale. He had clothing, CDs, books, and this really awesome wrestling belt.

Everything was super cheap and I picked up a ton of DVD’s from Disinformation. The guy claimed he had made his living doing poetry slam. I didn’t even know you could make a living doing that — at least not past 1994.

This is the point in the day when stuff started to get really weird. We drove down a side street looking for a sale and there was a man dressed in top hat and tails. Bearded, a little odd looking. I noticed a suitcase behind him that said something about the circus. Karl called out to him: “Are you a magician?” The guy said no. Karl replied, “I wish you would disappear.” We almost died laughing as I drove us out of there fast.

A guy at the next sale (where there was a Dane Cook CD … yuck) heard us still laughing about it and (I guess) Karl said he was going to hassle him as we drove off. Sure enough, he yelled out “Hey, cool shirt!” Guy: “Thanks!” Karl: “I’m kidding.”

Since the Greenwood car show was going on we tried to go to sales that wouldn’t put us too close to the action, but then we hit this massive traffic jam and when the light changed while I was stuck in the middle of the street all hell started to break loose and some guy was trying to go around me. It was bad, but even worse? Karl’s cell pocket-dialed a friend who had to listen to this entire traffic jam and me screaming when it seemed like the guy was going to hit us. We figured out right after that a lot of the main roads had been shut down for the Rock and Roll Marathon.

We hit a few more sales without finding much of anything. One of them had this friendly dog perched by their yard sale sign.

At another we were greeted by Stephen Colbert!

I think this is where Karl picked up what we were calling a man purse — or murse. They were also selling this hot dog phone.

And then we hit what is now being called “the freak sale.” The first thing I noticed was that they had about 11 boxes of books and all of them were about religion. When I made a comment about this, a woman with her t-shirt pulled up over her head so just her face was sticking out answered back. Honestly, I really didn’t want to look at her, since the shirt flipped on her head was strange enough, but Jenny was more freaked out on the fact that she had sunscreen all over her face that she hadn’t rubbed in, so she had big white smears all over her face.

They also had 100s of CDs, all of them sooooo fucking awful. I don’t even know how you could own this much bad music. Next to them was a table with a really strange assortment of stuff.

Jenny found this box of really odd how-to teen booklets, cook books, anti-communist propaganda, and other wacky pamphlets. Some of them were really funny, like one with Mr. Rogers about going to the hospital.

We both started grabbing some pamphlets, but then when we found out they were $1 each, I sort of turned on the guy. I am not really sure why. It’s not like a dollar is a ton of money, but it’s a yard sale! When I made some comment like “you just lost a sale” he claimed that he has a ton more buyers coming. It’s 12:00 PM on a Saturday. Who the heck do you think is coming?!?!

Then I noticed Karl walking around with a copy of Viva Magazine from the ’70s. All I could think was how does this sale have porn? Turned out he had boxes of Playboys and other stuff. The guy told us he got them from an estate sale. In typical form, Karl replied “when you say estate sale, you mean subscription, right?”

After that we hit another 20-something shitty sale, but Karl found a box of old LPs to dig through. Jenny and I walk across the street and out of boredom, start flipping through the porn in the trunk. I am looking at the very mild 1979 copy of Viva. This shit is pretty darn tame by today’s standards. Jenny on the other hand has found the real porn, some weird dirty 1970s mag from Denmark. We are both making jokes and just shooting the shit about the magazines, when the woman from the sale walks all the way across to the street to tell us that we needed to have this conversation elsewhere and that we needed to be more respectful. Both Jenny and I didn’t even know how to react. I mean was she really serious? She is like 23 years old and how loud could we really be, she was across the street!

Just to round out the oddness we hit a sale that I swear to god looked like when Enid visits Seymour at his garage sale in Ghost World.

Funny since that movie also has a scene where Enid has a yard sale to make extra money. Sadly, this one didn’t have anything, and the music they were playing was horrible.

For all his bitching, it seems like most of the stuff in the trunk photo was purchased by Karl …