What's your white whale? Post something you've been trying to find for ages

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > What's your white whale? Post something you've been trying to find for ages

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

I'm always searching for various books and other miscellaneous crap, and have gotten pretty good at finding what I'm looking for, even if it takes me years to do so. That being said, sometimes things elude me no matter how hard I search. Here are three that I've posted about in other threads. I would appreciate any help, especially for the first one.

1) "It'sa" brand anything

See below:

Gutter Phoenix posted:

In 1997 I stopped at a gas station somewhere near Santa Rosa, CA and the mini-mart was completely stocked with It'sa brand merchandise. Stuff like "It'sa Cola!" and "It'sa Sandwich!" Here is a candy wrapper I saved because it was so goddamn weird. Look at those loving quotes!!

I have never seen It'sa brand anything ever again, and can't find any information on it online. If anyone knows anything about it, clue me in.

2) Somebody Loves Me: The Story of a Beggar Boy by Jack Chick (1965)

I've been collecting Chick tracts off & on for over 20 years. I have almost all of the 300+ Chick tracts, and close to 1,000 different variations of them. Nonetheless, there are some incredibly rare promotional tracts that I've never seen for sale in all my years of searching. And then there is this, which I have never even seen a picture of:

(info from the 1966 catalog of copyright entries)

Gutter Phoenix posted:

Chick tract #5 - Somebody Loves Me (1965).

I have never actually seen one of these, so a couple of old ads from the mid-60s will have to suffice:

3) 1967 Spider-Man Theme Song 45 rpm 7"

Gutter Phoenix posted:

Not a book, but I figured I'd share it anyway. My friend's brother used to have a 45 rpm record with the theme from the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, and I've been looking for a copy for almost 25 years. I can find no trace of it online, and would have thought it didn't even exist if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears back in high school. I don't actually know if this is the same record, and don't currently have a record player to listen to it so I don't even know if it's the classic theme song, but after searching unsuccessfully for a quarter century I figured I'd risk buying it anyway:

That one turned out to be the wrong record, although the music is hilariously terrible, so it was a happy accident.

I want to say that the one I'm remembering was one of those Peter Pan brand kiddie records, but I just don't know anymore.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2019 23:07

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 18:39

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

Telemaze posted:

Holy crap yes that clown is exactly like it! It's so incredibly similar that they must've come from the same pattern or maker. The sewing pattern linked seems different, my toy cat was flat like that clown, no place for buttons or clothes.

I've found the Encyclopedia Brown episodes on youtube but they're different, alas. The ones they showed us in school were mostly static illustrations with narration over them.

If all else fails, you can buy the filmstrip & cassette sets on ebay for fairly cheap:

# ¿ Aug 1, 2019 00:07

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

curlingiron posted:

I don�t know how helpful this is, but I�m almost positive I�ve seen this one. The kid gets progressively sicker from the beatings and lack of food. Eventually someone tosses him a �Jesus Loves You!� pin or the like, thus prompting the �Somebody loves me!� line. At the end of the track he crawls in a cardboard box and dies (but ends up in heaven, so it�s all okay).

You might see is anyone near Portland OR has one, because that�s where I would have seen it. Someone really thought the art school kids needed saving, so there were a lot of them in circulation for a while (for us to laugh at).

I appreciate the help, but you are probably thinking of the version that is still in print, and has been since 1970. The one I am looking for is from 1965, larger than a normal Chick tract (approx. 4x5" instead of 2.5x5"), and is mostly text on the cover.

That being said, I often used to find Chick tracts on the street when I lived in Portland, so who knows?

If anyone sees the 1965 version, please buy it & send it to me. I will make it worth your while.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2019 14:50

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

PetraCore posted:

I swear I've read that one on an online archive, but it might have been a similar Chick tract.

The normal version is very common. The cover of the 1965 version would look like this:

Again, I truly appreciate the help.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2019 16:28

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

Robokomodo posted:

Oh My God. I completely forgot about those books! I had about 5 that I read every morning waiting for the school bus! Now I have a new white whale! I need them all!

Nevermind. Looks like they�re 10-20$ a book. Gonna let this whale get away.

I bought a pristine set of all 30+ books for about $60 on ebay about 18 months ago. I hope you can do the same, because those books are ridiculous and amazing!

# ¿ Aug 6, 2019 04:15

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

A Pack of Kobolds posted:

The complete series of Gemini Man starring Ben Murphy, the lovely TV show that spawned the Riding with Death Episode of MST3K. Not even Scarecrow Video has it.

I will not vouch for this website or anything, but you can get a bootleg DVD set for $23 here:

http://www.pandorasvideo.com/page284.html

# ¿ Aug 6, 2019 22:43

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

Linux Pirate posted:

It's a long shot, almost impossible I'd say. But if someone could help me find this poster for purchase I would give you all my pogs

(the skeleton, not the weed poster)

It looks like at least 2 have sold on ebay since 2017. One sold for $20 + $5 shipping. I can't find the cost of the other, but I didn't look that hard.

The poster is #3540, and it's from 1974. I would suggest searching for something like "3540 poster 1974," or "vintage skeleton toilet poster," or some combination of those keywords. You can set ebay to send you a message anytime something shows up under one of your saved searches. It might take a day, it might take a year, but I bet one will show up eventually. There might even be one on there now if you look hard enough with different combinations of keywords.

Try etsy too. People sell weird poo poo on there, not just crafts they made.

Good luck! I hope you find it.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2019 03:10

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

Linux Pirate posted:

Holy poo poo you are a legend among goons. Your sage knowledge of the arcane arts of 50's, 60's, 70's, and onward printed media is appreciated in words I cannot adequately express.
I honestly thought this would be glossed over.

And I know it sounds like I'm kissing rear end at this point, but your threads always rule.

Lol, no problem. I like searching for odd, obscure stuff.

I looked a bit more, and one sold for $32 or so (including shipping) on June 29th. I'd post a picture, but it's a pain in the rear end to do on my phone.

I think it might be a Grateful Dead poster, so maybe try that as a keyword. Or " ya gotta go" in quotes. Also, it was made by a company called Dargis, so maybe try that.

EDIT while I have my laptop on:

Here is the most recent (sold, unfortunately) ebay listing I was talking about :

And here is the fine print, which has details that should help with searching for that poster:

Gutter Phoenix fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Sep 4, 2019

# ¿ Sep 4, 2019 03:38

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

There is a great documentary from 1984 called Gore Vidal: The Man Who Said No, about his 1982 primary run against Jerry Brown for one of California's Senate seats. It was only released on VHS, and I have never been able to find a digitized version online.

I shouldn't even be asking for this because I have a battered old VHS copy, just no easy way to rip it. I should probably just get off my lazy rear end and do finally hook up my ancient desktop computer to the even more ancient VCR, but figured I'd ask if anyone has a copy before I go through the monumental effort of doing that.

On that note, is there an easy way to convert VHS tapes these days? I am pretty ignorant when it comes to computers beyond what I need to teach myself for work, so any help is appreciated.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2019 16:33

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

FilthyImp posted:

Probably best to send it along to a reputable conversion house to do (if they can do, dunno about the legality there).

Otherwise you'll need a capture device to plug into your computer that accepts Composite so you can hook the image out of the VHS player, something like Premiere Pro or iMovie to capture/edit the footage, and some time.

You'll probably be able to find a capture device that automates the capture process and has its own software if that helps things.

Thanks! Yeah, I do have a converter thingamabob, and really just need to set it up. I should probably just get off my lazy rear end and convert my few remaining VHS tapes while they still (hopefully) work.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2019 17:56

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW posted:

Does anyone know what game this screen shot is from?

I think that's from some pirate themed game that came with the Playstation 4. I don't play many games, but I won that one while working from home because my girlfriend got a PS4 for some reason.

This:

# ¿ Sep 19, 2019 22:28

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

Mammal Sauce posted:

I guess you can do whatever when you're your own boss, but you probably should have been jacking off your girlfriend instead of playing games on the clock.

I had almost two years of getting paid while doing very little and having no oversight. It was glorious. Will probably look back on them as the best years of my life.

I had so much free time I took a break from reading books and started playing video games while my girlfriend was at work. That pirate game was fun. Video games have improved a bit since the Nintendo I had as a kid.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2019 23:09

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

Rollersnake posted:

This is driving me up the wall because it's a quote I read at some point in the last month or two, probably not on SA, and I can't remember the precise wording, the context, or who said it, beyond that it was a punk musician or other counterculture figure, and it was the opposite of what I would have expected them to believe. I already considered it might have been Jello Biafra from one of the zines posted in the VANTASM thread, but it probably wasn't that, or him.

Essentially it was stating that it was important for children to have fantasy or magical beliefs ("Disney phase" may have been the wording, or at least I remember Disney specifically being mentioned) to give them armor against the harsh realities of the world, and that to be raised in the cynicism of adulthood is too much for anyone to bear.

I hate that! It happens to me all the time, so I try to email notes or quotes to myself if I think I'll want to reference them again in the future. That makes it easy to search for them by keywords.

Anyway, it sounds like something Jello Biafra would say, but when you said it was opposite of what you thought that person would think I immedately thought of the Steve Albini interview (posted on pg. 34 of the magazine thread) because of his reputation as an rear end hole. However, I just scanned over the text and didnn't see any mention of Disney.

Wish I could help, but that quote doesn't sound familiar to me. It could very well be in the Vantasm thread, but there's a lot of text to wade through and no easy way to search for it.

Sorry!

# ¿ Sep 22, 2019 18:00

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

Raspberry Bang posted:

One that�s been killing me for awhile is a little jingle that I swear Homer Simpson sung. I don�t remember the context of it but the little tune is �I�m taken my clothes off. I�m gettin� them all took off� sorta like a lounge singer.

"I'm shaving my shoulders..." might be what you're thinking of.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2019 00:18

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

precision posted:

Oh gently caress, that reminds me of another one!

Around 96 I was at a buddy's house with a bunch of people and we were all drunk and stoned when he puts on this VHS tape that he had found in a yard sale.

On it was this completely loving bizarre home movie made by people living in a trailer where they re enacted the entire movie Star Wars. Audio was missing and (probably) someone else had put a really dark industrial soundtrack to it that made the whole thing even more strange. Please tell me someone else has seen this via internet tape trading

And speaking of tape trading, another buddy 10 years ago had traded online for a VHS that was a metal band performing at a prom for retarded/special needs kids. The kids were all dancing and rocking out and having a great time and the band was actually pretty good.

I recall at a couple points the chaperones tried to calm the kids down and the band was like "come on they're just having fun". There were a lot of little moments the filmmaker captured like two of the kids shyly trying to hold hands.

Edit: should have known the second one was on youtube, but it's just a short clip, not the whole thing:

https://youtu.be/CUgOIFN-0Y0

The second one sounds like Mr. Bungle or some other Mike Patton band playing for the Kids of Widney High.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kids_of_Widney_High

Edit: Nevermind, I didn't see the video you posted.
Look up the Kids of Widney High anyway.

Gutter Phoenix fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Jan 12, 2020

# ¿ Jan 12, 2020 23:26

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

CarpenterWalrus posted:

I'm doing it: Pablo Picasso was an rear end in a top hat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGcffXXZYEg

# ¿ Jan 24, 2020 00:01

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

cookiefulloarsenic posted:

Is this it? Haste En Las Mejores Familias
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWkG6BqdR-c

Thank you for introducing me to this!!!

I must find more...

# ¿ Feb 3, 2020 18:44

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

The Human Cow posted:

This sounds like Roy D. Mercer to me. How big a boy are you?

I vaguely remember a Roy D. Mercer call where he claimed his cat's name was "Meow Tse-Tung." I thought that was hilarious. Still do.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2020 18:47

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

Crosspost from Trump LOL thread:

I've been searching for a copy of "The Spirit and Purpose of the People of Praise," which is the 1971 handbook for the crazy cult Amy Coney Barrett belongs to. I am usually pretty good at tracking down obscure books in one form or another, but I cannot find this one anywhere. Even online references to it are rare. Not on Amazon or ebay either. Weird.

I did find two issues of their newsletter, "Vine & Branches":

https://fliphtml5.com/waov/cpst/basic

http://online.fliphtml5.com/kfrj/vejl/#p=1

Anyway, if anyone happens to come across any more People of Praise texts, please share. I will continue my search...

# ¿ Oct 13, 2020 18:59

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

uvar posted:

Those unique rings sound absolutely like a Discovery Channel store product. No luck finding any evidence of them though.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190128160311/https://peopleofpraise.org/thevine/ has a bunch of direct links to newsletters; I haven't checked how many are available but if you go to https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.peopleofpraise.org/* and filter by "application/pdf" it looks like a decent amount got saved. Using the latter link is a complete list but downloading each one will take longer so it's more annoying. I doubt there'll be anything interesting but hey.

Yond Cassius posted:

For what it's worth, someone on Daily Kos posted some pictures of pages.
It may be a good idea to save them in case they get DMCAd.

Thank you both!

# ¿ Oct 17, 2020 07:57

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 18:39

Gutter Phoenix: Jul 23, 2013; I preferred your last avatar, so I put it back. My apologies to the pedo who purchased your last one (it's always projection).

YouTubeTekReviewer posted:

I just finished reading through this entire thread and I don't think I ever saw anyone mention this one. The "It'sa" brand was the store brand for a chain of gas stations and convenience stores in the North Bay Area of California back when I was growing up there in the 80's and 90's. It was originally called (I think) "Food & Liquor Cheaper!" and then just "Cheaper!" I've since moved away but checking on Google Maps shows the one that was down the street from my house is now another chain called "Bonfare Market". No idea if they are still affiliated (I don't see any "It'sa" brand anything in the photos on Google Maps), but I definitely remember my parents stopping there and bringing home groceries in paper bags with rants about high taxes and other perceived government over-reach. I also remember they even had stickers on the gas pumps talking about the taxes included in the price per gallon of gas and how much Cheaper! gas could be if there weren't any.

Here's a news article about the folks behind the chain; you'll see it lines up with the quotes from your wrapper. You may be able to find more by searching for the folks mentioned there.

https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Paper-Plastic-Don-t-Vote-Grocery-chain-s-2969137.php

Edit: oh poo poo, that guy got got for financial fraud : https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/sanfrancisco/press-releases/2012/former-owner-of-cigarettes-cheaper-sentenced-to-five-years-for-bank-fraud.

and his house burned down! https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Glass-House-Fairfield-CA-fire-1700-Twin-Sisters-12283831.php

Holy poo poo!! Thank you!!!!

# ¿ Jun 26, 2021 04:49

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