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I just put $1,500 worth of my personal collection into the stock for next Saturday’s Warehouse Sale! Out of print art books, puppets, plushies, action figures, statues, swords, shields, it’s all out on the table. It’s like a yard sale for the store, and hopefully everything will go so we can start all over again!

Stephen’s So-Called Emo Life!

• Paper Girls - on Amazon Prime starting tomorrow! I got the inside track on the adaptation of the Brian K. Vaughan & Cliff Chiang Image Comics series, and while it can’t meet the vibrancy of Matt Wilson’s colors or the overall weirdness of the world (just like Umbrella Academy), it does justice to the source narrative and will hit that Stranger Things spot for people that have no idea that it’s based on a comic. Also, Mac looks and sounds exactly like Edward Furlong in Terminator 2, and now you can’t get that out of your head.

Driving to the Jim ‘n Nick’s in Gastonia on Saturday night during HeroesCon 2019 (I didn’t realize at that point that there were closer locations), as we crossed 485 on S. Tryon and I caught a glimpse of Fury 325 towering on the horizon, I sent everyone in the car into hysterics by whispering more to myself than anyone in particular, “I like rides.”

One of my partners’ selling points to me on the Concord store is that it would be the perfect staging ground for regular trips to Carowinds and ever since Colton and I have dreamed of getting season passes, closing up shop at 7 and boogying across town to get in a few last minute rides before they closed up. Of course, then there was COVID.

So it took us over two years, but we finally played hooky and made a day of it, ate until our stomachs hurt, rode until we were dizzy, and waited until thankfully short lines in the sun had thoroughly baked our skin. We will sleep well tonight!

Stephen’s So-Called Emo Life!

• The Bear - streaming on Hulu. I thought I’d seen enough of Jeremy Allen White as a working-class Chicago grunt in 134 episodes of Shameless and the five star take on take out in Jon Favreau’s chef, but I checked this out anyway because of Austin’s enthusiasm for it. Episode 7 almost gave me a panic attack, I think I mean that in a good way.

• The Orville - also on Hulu. Even though it’s a knife in Jay’s heart to say it, it’s better than anything Paramount+ has done with Star Trek in the last five years (though Strange New Worlds was close). I’m also really impressed that they’ve done mini movies, going over an hour on all but one episode and feature length twice in the first seven, breaking the 42 minute dramedy format they were stuck with when they were on Fox, but not in a way they felt like being long for the sake of being long like Stranger Things season four.

• Last Night in Soho - now available on HBO Max. The first Edgar Wright movie I didn’t seen in the theater and the first Edgar Wright movie I didn’t like.

Man, a lot going on this week! Lois and I were featured as part of Evan Harris’s spread in the latest issue of O’Henry Magazine. A customer brought me two print copies and a framed print of our page, but I’ve got parents and grandparents and in-laws asking for them, too, so if you seem them around please grab them.

More store-centric, our plaque arrived for our win in the Yes Weekly Triad’s Best Awards, which will be hung behind the counter as soon as I finish building my new shelves at home and bring my tools back to the shop. We made a house call to Kernersville last Friday to potentially buy a collection, which didn’t work out, but then ten long boxes walked in the door on Sunday, which has helped us freshen up the backwall and refill the backstock. We got a collection of 25 Transformers Generations combiners that we’re still trying to process and find space for out on the sales floor. And we moved seven more short boxes of unique backstock into our space in Nerdbombers in Friendly Center!

Jay and Colton are on vacation until Tuesday, Mike had his first child on yesterday morning (CONGRATS!), Bret and Kevin are holding down Winston, and Malachai and Brian have Concord under control, but all of that means that it’s just me and Austin on the homefront this weekend, so we’ll be sitting out setting up at HeroesCon 2022, but I fully encourage all of you to make a trip of it in our stead! You could even get your own pet sketched by Trish Forstner and Tony Fleecs like the one we got of Lois seen above!

In case you missed our announcement under the headline that we won the Triad’s Best Comic Book Store in the 2022 Yes Weekly Reader’s Poll thanks to your tireless support, we’re also doing a pop-up store in Nerdbombers, located at 3121 Kathleen Avenue in Friendly Center right across the street from Five Guys! We’re starting out with a brand-new Silver & Bronze Age collection and building up from there, so if you’re looking for an elusive action figure, killing time before your movie at the Regal Grande, or waiting on a partner shopping at another store in the complex, we’ve got you covered with the help of our new friend!

That’s two of the surprises I teased two weeks ago, stay tuned for one more on the way!

Still stalling!

Stephen’s So-Called Emo Life!

• Shoresy - a more Louie take on the Letterkenny dark horse, kind of like Life & Beth, also on Hulu, it’s something that I don’t know if anyone else would enjoy as much as me and Carly.

• Everything Everywhere All at Once - do yourself a favor and see it in the theater while there’s still time. Probably my favorite movie in the last six years. Maybe 18 years. Better than the other three movies I’ve been to see in the last month (Doctor Strange, Top Gun, and preemptively Jurassic World tomorrow).

• The Power of Now - the 1997 Eckhart Tolle classic, Carly was turned onto it by the Always Sunny podcast, because while Glenn, Rob, and Charlie play the worst people in history on TV, they try to be better people IRL.

This past week of releases was a bit of a phantom “fifth week”, but we’re right back to regular business if not bigger & better than before this coming Wednesday!

On the home front, we have three very special announcements coming! I can say for certain that one of them will be coming on June 15th. The second should be around that time, think our outpost at Antiques & Geeks in Asheboro, but closer to home. And the last will be announced in advance, but will take place over the Independence Day weekend.

So, yeah, plenty to talk about in the coming posts!