Who Will Wear My VCR Button On A Chain Around Their Neck?

A neighborhood institution is gone.

My local Lakeside video store has packed it in and sold their stock to their competitor.

Is it stupid in this day and age to be upset by these things?

I walked into the store a couple days ago and the lights were turned off and there were strangers taking dvd's off the shelves. A simple sign thanked customers for shopping there and told us that we could go to "the competitor" for our video needs.

Ahhhh, no. I will not.

When we first moved here, we had a membership at both places. "The Competitor" was always what I refer to simply as "dumb". They might sell ice cream but when it comes to movies, they didn't know jack. They certainly catered to the lowest common denominator and wouldn't know an intelligent movie if it bit them in the ass. There was also the fact that they had a tendency to hire mouth breathers and bubble heads. If I inquire about a movie that is either older or "artsy" and you have determined that you don't stock it, it really isn't good customer service to say "God! I've never even heard of THAT one!" And then blow a big pink bubble before flitting away.

MY video store would never do that. MY video store would greet me warmly when I entered, ask if they could help me find anything, AND get to know me enough that they could actually recommend movies that I liked.

That is known as "customer relations".

I KNOW I have fussy tastes when it comes to movies. I love watching movies that crawl under your skin and wrap around your brain and make you THINK. Alternately, I like movies that can make me laugh without a single fart joke or derogatory comment.

I even had a membership to Netflix which I only used to get movies that I couldn't get at MY video store. I appreciated the good service and didn't want to take my business else where. The few times that I would wander into Blockbuster, I felt like I needed a shower after wards.

Blockbuster also doesn't understand me.

I'm going to miss them terribly. I'm going to miss walking in and asking about obscure movies and having the counter person say "Hey! I saw that when it was in the theater! I had to drive three hours to see it in the cities but it was really good! Do you want me to order it in for you?"

I will continue to go to the competitor for their dairy treats. I will also continue to look around at their stock and roll my eyes at the fact that they have four year old movies under "new releases" and they don't have the time to add "/Fantasy" on their "Sci-Fi" sign. Finding Lord of the Rings in Sci-Fi is wrong. WRONG.

I'm now surrounded by amateurs.

Alice full of Malice?

Welcome to the middle of the longest week of my life, where every minute lasts a month and all the years are decades.

Time for a random awesome diversion:

Two of my favorite things are colliding in 2010.

Leave it to Johnny Depp to make me want to go on.

For Your Consideration

Do me a favor. Please.

When you're planning your weekend, plan to see the movie "Up".

It's the best kid's movie that I've ever seen.

My daughter saw it a few days ago and said, first of all, Dug the Dog was our dog Kirby. Yup. Spot on.





























And that it was so sweet. And so sad. And so wonderful.

The first five minutes had me sobbing. It was the sweetest, most concise montage ever.

I went with my son as my daughter left today for her first day as a residential camp counselor. We had dinner and a movie and at the end, we were both wiping our eyes.

I'm not going to give anything away but I will say that at the end, on the car ride home, my son made an observation about the little boy in the movie who was estranged from his father.

"It was so sad. He was such a sweet kid and he only wanted to have his dad love him."

And that's when my heart broke.

Go on now...go get your ticket...off you go...

Bustin' The Block

Walking through the video store lately has been like picking my way gingerly through a minefield. I generally hate chick flicks but there are a few that I ran a contemplative finger over last weekend and then decided against it. I have a tendency to take comfort in the familiar. I will rent movies that affected me a certain way in the past because I KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT. I have my Ipod sorted by mood, not genre, because that's just how I swing.

I knew I needed something that would make me laugh last weekend and I couldn't think of any movie that I had already seen that would do the trick.

This is where I stand up and admit to horrifying deficits in my knowledge of culture and cinema. There are vast black holes out there that can be traced directly to "Oh, I was in college at the time and the nearest theater was fifty miles away and I didn't have a car" or "Those where the years of the young children...when no movie theater was visited and all DVD's were interrupted by crying...some of it from the children".

I had never seen Bull Durham. It is a fact that I am ashamed of because not only did I grow up in the bleachers of Tiger Stadium in Detroit (that's where I saw my first crack pipe!), I wrote a book while I was still in high school about the 1986 Detroit Tigers and had it published. I believe my only copy is now propping up the short leg on my table.

So I can finally say that I saw Bull Durham and just like Fight Club (which I saw last year), for one brief and shining moment, I happily swam up stream with the rest of the crowd. Only twenty-two years too late.

Yeah, that's about right for me.

This next weekend is the last weekend before the sentencing. I believe I am going to set aside another movie night. As my son has stated about other activities I set aside to do for myself "Mom, I think that would be very therapeutic."

Thanks Sigmund. Always remember, your mamma loves you. Now don't talk smack about me in twenty years when you're the one on the couch.

I'm very curious to know what movies would make your lists for "intelligent and funny". I have to admit, I'm a horrible snob when it comes to stupid funny movies. Wrapping a two hour movie around fart and poop jokes makes me cranky. Wrapping a movie around addictions to self help groups and creating anarchy, well, I am Jack's inner movie critic. (That being said, I sat through The Queen just for the four seconds of Corgi's on screen. Medicate me NOW!)

My intelligent-funny list would include Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, Raising Arizona, and Burn After Reading. Gee, Cohan Brothers much? Of course Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead would be there as well.

My enjoyable chick flick movies would include Always (I have a total girl crush on Holly Hunter. She could read the phone book for me and I'd be happy), High Fidelity and Grosse Point Blank (I have a total girl crush on John Cusack in his early years. Now, not so much...), and Field of Dreams. After seeing Kevin Costner in Bull Durham, I realized one thing, he used to be somewhat good. And now????

And my totally bizarre psychotic self would have to throw in a category of disturbing movies that shouldn't have affected me in the way that they did but they did and it probably means that I need even more therapy than I first suspected: Let The Right One In.

If you're not into vampires or if you're into Twilight vampires, this is not for you. If you're into an amazing story of pain, alienation, and sweet, merciful revenge, RENT IT! It's a foreign film so be prepared for a very un-Hollywood experience.

If anyone suggests Shawshank Redemption, I will smite thee...unless it's for just one particular scene...yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

I Learned This At A Leadership Seminar

In case you haven't seen The Dark Knight, here is the pencil trick.



Now, don't you think this would, should you begin your next business meeting with it, focus the minds of your fellow employees?